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The postulates of revelatio 
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THE POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


AND OL EPEC, 


BY 


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THOMAS: HILEY D:D.; LL-D. 


Lormerly President of Harvard University, and Lecturer on T, heology and Ethics in 
the Meadville Theological School. 


BOSTON: 
Gro H. EL.is, 141 FRANKLIN STREET. 


1895. 


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GEO. H. ELLIS, PRINTER, 141 FRANKLIN STREET, BOSTON. 


eRe AGEs 


THE two courses of lectures included in this volume 
are those repeatedly given by their author while he held 
the position of Lecturer on Theology and Ethics in 
the Meadville Theological School. The lectures on the 
“Postulates of Revelation” were last delivered in the 
spring of 1891; and their delivery was, as it happened, 
the last work of his life. Of this course, the last two 
lectures were also included among those given at the 
Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1870, on the “ Natural 
Sources of Religious Knowledge.” Though they repeat 
some points of the earlier lectures, they are inserted in 
this place, partly because they were sometimes used in 
connection with the others, but mainly because they treat 
one or two topics more fully, and give a certain complete- 
ness to the expression of the author’s thought. Espe- 
cially characteristic and valuable are some portions of the 
chapter on “ Authority and Influence.” | 

It should be remembered, however, that these two lect- 
ures do not appear to have been lately revised by Dr. 
Hill, and that there may therefore occur in them some 


iV PREFACE 


views, or forms of expression, which, after twenty years, 
he would have wished to modify. The manuscripts of 
the other lectures show that he made frequent additions 
and erasures,— changes which, however, usually serve 
rather to illustrate or apply his thought than to affect 
its substance. Ten chapters of the ‘ Postulates of Reve- 
lation” were published in the Unitarian Review during 
the years 1885-87; and they form the only portion of 
the book which has had the advantage of the author’s 
revision. These chapters retain here the form in which 
they were originally printed, except that the style of 
direct address has been restored, as well as, in a few in- 
stances, an apposite figure or illustration. The titles of 
chapters have also, in a few instances, been modified or 
restored. 

The remaining lectures have been changed as little as 
possible. I have believed that the friends of Dr. Hill, 
and certainly those who listened to these lectures, would 
prefer to have this book — which may be regarded as in 
some sense a memorial volume — retain as much as might 
be of the flavor of his personality. To this end, inci- 
dental explanations, personal opinions, the frequent happy 
use of current discussions, the special shaping of his 
theme to the character of his auditory,—more than all, 
the many bits of intellectual autobiography which gave 
added clearness and zest in the hearing,— may, perhaps, 
be welcomed also by the readers of these lectures. Their 


PREFACE Vv 


interest would be much increased doubtless, too, if it 
were possible to recall more of the wealth of literary or 
scientific anecdote, and the frequent statement of per- 
sonal observation and experience, which the _ lecturer 
poured forth freely from apparently inexhaustible stores, 
and which often formed a delightful running commentary 
upon the severer discussions of the text. For the same 
reason, I have seldom changed the passages in which he 
sought, from year to year, to utilize current aspects of 
ethical or religious discussion, or to meet the mental 
posture and needs of those before him. While such para- 
graphs may sometimes break the continuity of the argu- 
ment, or give undue emphasis to some passing phase of 
thought, they yet have a biographical interest which has 
seemed to warrant their retention. So, too, the repeti- 
tion incident to spoken discourse, and to the discussion 
in successive courses of allied and in part coincident 
themes, and the summaries found at the beginning of 
most chapters, and sometimes at the end, however super- 
fluous to the scholar, will probably be found helpful to 
the average student and the general reader. 

These lectures contain in completer form the leading 
views of the author on the topics discussed in a series of 
articles in the Bzbliotheca Sacra — reprinted in “ The Nat- 
ural Sources of Religious Knowledge’ —and in the little 
work called “‘Geometry and Faith.” That they form a 
valuable contribution to the study of the grounds of relig- 


vi PREFACE 


ion and ethics is the judgment of many who have heard 
or read them. Few have brought to this discussion so 
large and varied knowledge, such comprehensive grasp of 
the principles of science and the laws of the human mind, 
an insight so keen, a judgment so well trained and saga- 
cious, and a spirit at once so receptive, so impartial, and 
so reverent. To the large intelligence of the great ob- 
server and the fearless thinker, Dr. Hill joined the enthu- 
siasm of the unceasing seeker for truth, and the higher 
wisdom of the pure in heart. To many of those who 
knew him, the opinion will not seem extravagant that for 
intellectual strength, wealth and variety of acquirements, 
and the vigor and justness of his thought, Dr. Hill had 
very few equals and fewer superiors among the men of 
his time. He would hardly have failed to achieve dis- 
tinction as a mathematician, a naturalist, a psychologist 
or metaphysician, even beyond that which he attained as 
an educator and theologian. Had his literary faculty 
equalled his mental power and the wide ranges of his 
knowledge, I know not what American writer would have 
excelled him in exposition of his chosen themes, 

It is probable that this breadth and fulness of knowl- 
edge have removed his writings somewhat from popular 
sympathies, and prevented his thought from being valued 
at its inherent worth. His treatment even of familiar 
themes often presupposed scientific and mathematical 
knowledge that is far from being universal. Few, even 


PREFACE Vii 


of those who regarded themselves disciples of the scien- 
tific method, were prepared to appreciate the familiar 
handling and far following of the facts and theories of 
science, in whose pursuit and companionship he took such 
delight. His hearers, even among theological students, 
did not always find it easy to realize the world of mathe- 
matical forms, whose harmonies he so clearly perceived, 
and in which he moved with such ease and secure footing. 
Possibly, even, some readers of these lectures will be 
ready to accord with Matthew Arnold’s suggestion, that 
for the average man a little mathematics goes a great 
way. 

A. more serious lack of sympathy between Dr. Hill 
and the scientific and religious fellowships to which he 
belonged grew, doubtless, from his lack of conviction as 
to the prevailing current theories of evolution. A warm 
friend and disciple of Agassiz, he shared that eminent 
naturalist’s objections to the Darwinian doctrine of the 
genetic development of species; and was utterly sceptical 
concerning natural selection as a main causal agency in 
the unfolding of the cosmic order and the mounting forms 
of life. To him the universe was manifestly the sphere 
of purposive thought; and he counted it unscientific to 
substitute unconscious process for intelligent directive 
Power. Darwinism was to him as unphilosophical as 
unproved. But his opposition was mainly to the agnostic 


inferences drawn from it by many of its advocates, who 


Vill PREFACE 


disowned all teleological causation, and to whom, at first, 
as one of them has lately said, “it seemed to begin and 
end only in materialism.’”’ It will be seen by the readers 
of these lectures that the methods Dr. Hill employed to 
refute this conclusion are largely those approved, in recent 
discussions, by eminent evolutionists themselves; and it 
is clear that his results as to the religious implications of 
science are much more consonant with the tendencies 
and spirit of contemporary scientific thought than they 
were when first advanced a generation ago. On the 
other hand, he soon came to the conviction, expressed in 
these pages, that theories of evolution are questions of 
purely scientific interest, by the acceptance or rejection 
of which the basis of religion will remain essentially un- 
affected. 

While these lectures aim to establish a basis for Chris- 
tian theology and ethics, they include a survey of the 
whole field of natural religion, and deal broadly with the 
grounds and implications of theism, as found in the uni- 
verse and in human nature. Dr. Hill was a convinced 
and devout Christian disciple; and he held this posture 
in fearless loyalty to the uttermost results of science and 
the profoundest investigations of right reason. The 
title of his volume of sermons, ‘“‘ Jesus, the Interpreter of 
Nature,” indicates his assured conviction of the essential 
harmony of Christianity with natural and universal relig- 
ion. Readers of these lectures will find in them nothing 


PREFACE iX 


of the belittling, and even contempt, of reason which 
must seriously qualify our admiration of certain recent 
brilliant defences of religion, and limit their service in 
re-establishing confidence in the grounds of faith. Dr, 
Hill’s central reliance on the moral and religious nature 
of man, as the rational and final witness to spiritual 
reality, lifted him above all anxieties as to the survival of 
ethical convictions and devout sentiments, and disengaged 
his interest from special forms of theological argument 
and Christian dogma. For instance, his treatment of 
final causes shows that the defence of teleology is not 
necessarily connected, and so far as he is concerned never 
has been connected, with the crude anthropomorphic form 
it bears in the caricatures of its assailants. 

It is interesting, also, to observe that, like several other 
leading defenders of spiritual ethics,—like Dr. William B. 
Carpenter and James Martineau,— Dr. Hill began as an 
advocate of necessity and utilitarianism, and like them 
early abandoned this position. That this has happened 
so frequently among minds of the first order, in the face 
of the wide-spread trend of evolutionary ethics in the 
opposite direction for the last generation, is, perhaps, as 
remarkable a testimony to the inextinguishable conviction 
of moral freedom, as the more religious interpretation of 
nature and science that is happily coming to prevail, and 
especially the recent notable instances of return from 
scepticism to faith, are persuasive evidences of the failure 


X PREFACE 


of concurrent agnostic theories, and heralds of a brighter 
day of rational conviction and religious trust. 

The dawning of that better day the former associates 
and pupils of Dr. Hill have believed that the publication 
of these lectures might contribute to advance. It has 
been a grateful service to superintend their publication, 
since increasing familiarity with them has but constantly 
deepened the lifelong sense of obligation and reverence 
for the author’s thought and character. 

Acknowledgments are due to Rev. A. W. Jackson, and 
to Professor H. B. Hill, of Harvard University, who have 
kindly assisted in correcting the proof-sheets for this 
volume. 


HiwHieen: 


MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, 
May 18, 1895. 


BLL. 


CONTENTS. 


at 


POSTULATES OF KEVELATION. 


THE UNSEEN REAL . 

THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 
THE INFINITE KNOWABLE 

FINAL CAUSES. 

THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 
POWER AND POSSIBILITY . 
LOGIC AND LOVE . 

BEAUTY 

THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE . 
THE INFINITE IN MAN 
RELATIVITY AND REALITY 

THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 
AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION . 


SUMMARY OF NATURAL SOURCES OF 
KNOWLEDGE 


ik 


POSTULALES) OW VE TAICS: 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS . 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS . 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS. 


105 
123 
140 


160 


» -175 


RELIGIOUS 


193 
209 


227, 


CONTENTS 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 
LOVE AND DUTY. 
DETERMINISM AND UTILITY. 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF . 


THE CONNECTION OF ETHICS WITH RELIGION . 


NON-RELIGIOUS MoRALS AND MORALISTS 


IERARNING: BY DOINGS. be ea tscue 


PAGE 
290 


304 
315 
328 
339 
351 
366 


POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


DHE SUNSEENG RE AT: 


No man does anything voluntarily without some feeling 
prompting him to the action. The feeling may be a mere 
impulse, selfish or unselfish. It may be a sense of obli- 
gation, of the constraint of duty, or the constraint of 
necessity. It may lie between these extremes. But the 
general truth embraces all these cases. The general 
proposition is that every action and every course of action 
is prompted by a more or less permanent state of feeling 
or desire, in the shape of taste, inclination, aversion, senti- 
ment of honor, friendship, ambition, sense of obligation 
or duty,— whatever be the motive toa voluntary action, 
it acts through feeling. 

The preacher who would mould character and lead 
men to right courses of action must therefore awaken 
in men some sort of feeling, some sentiment or emotion 
which will prompt to the desired course of action. None 
of the good works of the Christian Church are accom- 
plished by men who have no motives or feelings, good 
or bad, which lead them to engage in them. So far, 
therefore, those are undoubtedly right who say that a re- 
ligious character and religious life consist in a virtuous 
course of action, a life of usefulness to men, undertaken 
from good motives, prompted by right feelings; and that 
right feelings, holy and kind affections, being the springs 


4 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


of all right endeavors, are to receive the earnest attention 
of the Christian Church and of the Christian preacher, as 
essential foundations of the superstructure of benevolent 
action. Every voluntary action, every true volition, is 
prompted by something which has the nature of a feeling; 
that is, a desire, an aversion, a cherished conviction. 

The Church had for many centuries exalted right opin- 
ions so highly that many Christians were led to consider 
orthodoxy of incomparably more value than morality. 
Now, for fifty years, we have had moral character exalted 
so highly that many Christians appear to be forgetting that 
character is influenced and modified by belief. Character 
is of vastly more consequence than creed. Nevertheless, 
character is greatly influenced by creed. There are forms 
of intellectual belief which directly discourage and under- 
value all attempts to perfect holiness. There are other 
forms which are a direct stimulus and help to right 
endeavor. The will is prompted by feeling: feeling 
depends upon our view of the situation. Those who 
undervalue Christian doctrine, and say that it is no 
matter what a man believes, if his heart is only right, 
fall into the error of supposing that no form of belief can 
have any injurious effect on the heart. 

But we may go further. Every feeling, whatever may 
be its form, is accompanied by, and rests upon, a belief. 
The most foolish passion, the most purely instinctive 
aversion, not only blinds the judgment and misleads be- 
lief; it was accompanied by an error of belief from the 
beginning of its manifestation ; and the only way in which 
an adult ever learns to overcome foolish fondness and 
foolish aversions (which, if not innate, are sometimes con- 
nate) is by first disabusing himself of the foolish fancies 


THE UNSEEN ‘REAL 5 


connected with his feeling. And, if this be so in regard 
to these extreme cases, much more is it so with regard to 
actions in general. It is idle for men to say that the 
Christian preacher should confine himself to the domain 
of feeling and action. As action implies feeling,— and, 
in general, feeling must be aroused in order to produce 
action,— so feeling implies belief; and, in general, a cer- 
tain belief must be produced before the feeling can be 
aroused. In other words, men will not generally feel 
right about a matter until they take the right view of the 
matter. The Christian preacher will not induce his peo- 
ple to do that which he desires, unless he makes them 
also desirous of doing the same thing. And, although 
this awakening of the right desire is largely to be accom- 
plished by the contagion of sympathy, by the contact of 
living soul with living soul, yet it cannot be accomplished 
even so, unless it be preceded or accompanied by a per- 
suasion to look at the desirable things in the right light, 
to see and understand the truth concerning them. 
Christian preaching must therefore deal with truth, 
with doctrine. It cannot effect anything in the world 
if it ignores truth, if it follows the advice so frequently 
thrust upon it during the last few decades, and confines 
itself to religious aspiration and feeling, to the sense of 
honor and the hope of usefulness. All these sentiments 
imply foundations of truth, imply belief or doctrine. 
Men may, it is true, professedly deny the underlying 
truth, and still retain the feeling. But this is simply be- 
cause in their professed metaphysic they are doing un- 
conscious wrong to their own convictions, precisely as 
every believer in philosophical necessity admits that 
he practically believes in freedom as much as the man 


6 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


professedly believing in free will. Men may thus build 
secretly on foundations of whose existence they are not 
aware. They do not look below the surface, perhaps 
think their edifice stands independent of the rock be- 
neath. But, if the earthquake shakes the rock, their build- 
ing totters; and, if the rock falls into a subterraneous cave, 
their edifice follows. In other words, a man may hold 
verbally very foolish theories concerning the great sub- 
strata of morality and religion, and yet live a good life. 
But, if you really take out of his heart the deep convictions 
on which right actions justify themselves to reason, then 
you can no longer trust him when it comes to a real trial 
of his integrity. 

Strip Christianity of everything that can by the utmost 
rationalist be considered an accretion or a superfluity, and 
you still find that Jesus came “to bear testimony to the 
truth’”; and that, “whatever be’ the date “of ‘thes Pp aupen 
Gospel, that Gospel does not misrepresent the spirit of the 
great Teacher when it reports him as saying, “If ye con- 
tinue in my word, ye will be truly my disciples; and ye 
will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 
That truth is to be found not only in an acknowledgment 
of Christ’s truthfulness, but in the acknowledgment that 
he gave true teaching concerning God and duty and im- 
mortality. But, as he was teaching Jews, who had for 
centuries been a nation of believers in God, he takes for 
granted that his hearers accept this truth, that there is 
one God, the Father of all, and that our duty toward him 
is the highest duty. 

If, on the other hand, instead of reducing Christianity 
to its lowest terms, we enrich it with all the precious doc- 
trines concerning Jesus, his offices and functions, which 


THE UNSEEN REAL fé 


the cooler understanding will permit us to accept from 
among the stores of Christian thought in past ages, we 
shall all the more need to admit the truths which he im- 
plied in his teaching, and took for granted that the Jews 
would admit. 

I have been for many years accustomed to call these 
truths the postulates of revelation. Deny them,—that is, 
really and in the heart deny them,—and you deny the 
possibility of a revelation in any ordinary sense of the 
word. The morality of Jesus, which, confessedly, even on 
the lowest possible view of his authority, is the purest and 
best moral teaching extant, is built on religious founda- 
tions. It is the sublimated essence of all the Jewish 
morality, freed from the errors and narrowness of that 
earlier religion. It demands love and good will toward 
all men, because all are children of the same Father. It 
asks us to show mercy, that we may obtain METCy.  ELCetS 
reproduced admirably in Paul’s exhortation, “Be ye imi- 
tators of God, as dear children.”’ 

But, take away from a man all faith in the being of 
God, lead him to the thoroughly agnostic position of deny- 
ing that there are any evidences whatever of wisdom or 
love ruling the operations of Nature, and you render it 
impossible for him to be a Christian believer, even in the 
sense of accepting Christ’s teaching,— more impossible, if 
I may be allowed the expression, to believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, that he was sent, that he testified of what he 
knew. 

Even if, therefore, it would be to no profit for Christian 
believers in general to discuss these postulates of revela- 
tion,—and in ordinary preaching to men as they come, it 
may even be far better to avoid such themes, and to take 


8 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


for granted that all the congregation believe in one God, 
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, All- 
wise, All-holy, All-good,— yet it is well also for the Chris- 
tian preacher to be ready on occasion to fortify those 
whose faith is assailed by agnostic speculations, those 
who feel the chilling atmosphere which breathes from so 
much of our modern literature, aiming to be _half- 
scientific,— to fortify them by showing that he, too, has 
heard of the theories which deny the great postulates of 
revelation, and has examined those theories sufficiently to 
say with certainty that, whenever they conflict with these 
postulates, it is because the theory is either false or partly 
false, and needs correction; and that the postulates of 
revelation will stand as immovable as the axioms of 
geometry. 

Let us, therefore, endeavor to discover the real origin 
of these conceptions in the human mind, and to estimate 
their basis and validity as a foundation for a religious 
faith. Of course, we cannot expect to arrive at a perfect 
unanimity of opinion. Native differences of mental con- 
stitution and differences of early education will infallibly 
lead us to take different views on every subject. Even 
an algebraical equation or an axiom of geometry presents 
different phases to different minds. But there is always 
hope, if we are candid and truth-seeking, that we can come 
to a substantial agreement. The body of mathematical 
truth is agreed upon by all; and the unity of belief upon 
morality and religion will, after full and earnest discus- 
sion, become equally general. 

Let us begin, then, by inquiring what are the primal 
truths of consciousness, It has always seemed to me 
that the first intellectual act is the recognition of physical 


THE UNSEEN REAL 9 


motion; which is virtually a recognition of the existence 
of space and time. The first distinctly intellectual con- 
ception in the child is probably composed of three simul- 
taneous elements not separated in the act, but then inex- 
tricably fused. These are the consciousness of self, the 
consciousness of the motion of its own limbs and of the 
resistance to motion. But, as motion involves space and 
time, it may be said that this first probable intellectual 
act of the human being involves the perception of the 
existence of self, of matter, of space, and of time. In this 
first act of the intellect the grand problem of ontology is 
presented to it,—the high mystery of space, time, and 
spirit. 

The moment that the child is born we know by obser- 
vation that its intellectual activity concerning geometrical 
figure and concerning motion very far exceeds all its 
other intellectual activities. In a few weeks it learns to 
distinguish human beings at sight, in a few months it 
recognizes individuals. Before five years have passed it 
recognizes every kind of material object in engravings 
and photographs, and of course can do it only by the 
slight similarity of figure in the picture to the natural 
object. I admit that the child five years old has learned 
ten thousand other things. Jouffroy speaks well when 
he says that a man learns far more in the first five years 
of life than in any subsequent five. But I maintain that, 
in this vast amount of knowledge and of intellectual skill 
acquired in the first five years of life, by far the greater 
part is included in the knowledge of geometrical forms 
and of modes of motion. 

And modern science in its patient search after the 
unity of law has arrived at the grand result that probably 


IO POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


all physical phenomena are merely modes of motion. 
The five senses by which we take cognizance of the exist- 
ence and attributes of matter are capable of nothing 
further than the perception of motion or the resistance to 
motion. Touch, if we include in it the sense of muscular 
contraction, recognizes the motion of masses of a finite 
size, and the resistance to it. It also recognizes tempera- 
ture, which Bacon from a false induction, Huyghens and 
Rumford from correct reasoning, showed to be merely a 
mode of molecular motion. Touch further distinguishes 
between rigidity, plasticity, fluidity, and the gaseous con- 
dition ; and these have been reduced by modern science to 
difference in the movements of the atomic constituency of 
matter. 

Hearing is but the recognition of a certain tremor or 
vibration produced in the nerves of the ear by motions of 
the air, or of solid bodies in contact with the solid frame- 
work of the head. 

Sight is in the same way the recognition of certain 
tremors or vibrations in the optic nerve, referred to the 
vibrations of an ether by the almost unanimous judgment 
of modern men of science. 

Taste and smell are not so readily shown to be the cog- 
nition of motion. They apparently lay hold of chemical 
differences and identities. But what are chemical differ- 
ences and identities? They are referable in all instances 
to other standards than those of taste and smell. They 
are always capable, by proper manipulation, of being made 
manifest to sight and touch. Even the chemical forces 
can be weighed against the weight of the materials, and 
thus shown to be merely new manifestations of mechan- 
ical force; z.2., of the force that produces motion. Thus 


THE UNSEEN REAL II 


it is, in the view of science, highly probable that the elec- 
tric, magnetic, and chemical phenomena, since they are the 
result of forces which can be weighed against gravity and 
measured by motion (so many pounds, so many feet in a 
second), are themselves simply modes of motion. But 
what is physical motion? It is the passage of matter 
through space in time. It occupies time and _ space. 
And what is matter? It is that which is capable of mani- 
festing motion. We cannot get behind that. Push and 
drive your analysis as you may, you come to sensible 
properties which are shown by modern scientific experi- 
ment to be merely modes of motion in the molecules, or 
in the atoms. And what is an atom? All we know of it 
is that at a certain point in space there is a series of mani- 
festations of power repelling or attracting other points 
in certain directions. Make it a vortex ring in a homo- 
geneous, frictionless fluid, and you only drive the mystery 
further back. You create a finer kind of matter, to be 
defined in a similar way. What the thing itself is eludes 
our grasp. We only get its action, which is the manifes- 
tation of the force that produces or resists motion. 

All the universe of matter is thus reduced for us to a 
display of motion. This motion is communicated to our 
nervous system; and, when the. nervous system receives 
this motion and transmits it to the brain, we perceive it. 
We do not, however, recognize it as motion unless it pro- 
duce a finite motion in our nerves, passing sensibly from 
one part of the retina to another, changing in intensity 
within a finite time, etc. If it be infinite to us,—z.e,, 
moving all parts of our systems uniformly,— it is not rec- 
ognized at all. On the other hand, if the motion be in- 
finitesimal to us, we do not recognize it as motion, but 
call it sound, warmth, color, smell, and the like. 


12 POSTULATES, OF REVELATION 


How does the motion of the nervous system produce 
these changes in our consciousness? We do not know, 
nor can we conceive any mode while we are living in the 
body by which we can know. We are shut up simply to 
these conclusions: that we know the external universe, 
including our own bodies, primarily and directly, only 
through sensations; and that sensations are produced 
only through peculiar motions of the nervous system, 
communicated from motions of the outward world. But 
this movement of the outward world is, for us and as far 
as our knowledge can at present extend, a phenomenon 
of time and space only, producing changes of conscious- 
ness in us. The conscious self, and something not our- 
selves, as inscrutable as our self, illustrating for us by mo- 
tion the laws and relations of space and time,—this is all 
that is given to us in the simple act of sense-perception. 
To go higher, the conscious self must, since the content 
of that consciousness is simply self, and something not 
self, be aroused to new and higher action than simple 
sense-perception. 

It is aroused, first of all, to perceive that the phe- 
nomenon of motion involves space and time. The eternal 
and necessary existence of space is the thing which is 
usually first seen above and beyond sense-perception. 
We attempt to run out beyond the limits of vision; and 
we see that space must extend ever beyond. We try to 
imagine the removal of matter from a certain space, and 
see that the space itself cannot be removed. The neces- 
sary and eternal flow of time is usually the next of super- 
sensible things which is immediately perceived by the 
mind, The two ideas of space and time are fundamentally 
distinct, yet one cannot be conceived without the other. 


THE UNSEEN REAL 13 


Space must endure throughout all time; and we can 
imagine endurance in time only as being throughout all 
space. Motion takes place in both at once, and they are 
logically necessary antecedent conditions of motion. 

But, thirdly, when we study motion in any form, finite 
or infinitesimal, we perceive that it implies the existence 
of cause, efficiency, or power. This is a direct vision of 
that which escapes the senses. Motion is conceivable to 
us only as the passage of a something which is capable of 
motion, under pressure of a force capable of producing 
motion. Yet, as we have already said, when the physicist 
pursues his conception of an atom and hunts it down to 
its last analysis, he cannot distinguish it from a mere 
point in space whence certain forces flow. Even molar 
motions may therefore be said to be merely the transfer 
of the centres emanating force from point to point in 
space. Matter is known to us only as portions of space 
in which certain forces are manifested. And all forces 
are supposed by modern scientific men to be one and the 
same force, producing various modes of motion, as deter- 
mined by the action of the surrounding points. 

The two modes of motion, or force- manifestation, 
which are most widely diffused are elasticity and gravity. 
I strike a telegraph wire, and the jar courses along it by 
the elasticity of the iron at the rate of some three miles 
a second. I fire a cannon, and the sound flies only one- 
fifth of a mile in a second. But the light of the flash flies 
nearly a million times as fast. We thus learn that the 
elasticity of the wire is more than two hundred times as 
great in proportion to the weight of its molecules as that 
of air, and that the elasticity of the fluid or gas through 
which the wave of light is communicated is nearly a trill- 


I4 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ion (2.é., million million) times as great as that of the air. 
The immense tension of this elastic force goes beyond the 
reach of our imagination. The impulse given to it by the 
flash of the powder flies out at the rate of 186,000 miles 
a second. And this force, this compression, is omni- 
present. The most distant star visible to the most power- 
ful telescope announces to us, by the very fact of its 
visibility, that the source and the effects of this mighty 
grasp extend beyond the reach of the telescope. 

But the force of gravity, if it be communicated through 
undulations, must move ten million times as fast as light. 
At least, this is the calculation of Laplace. “If gravity 
require time for transmission,” he said, “its speed is at 
least ten million times that of light.’”’ But this would re- 
quire the universal presence of a fluid at least a hun- 
dred trillion times as elastic as that in which light moves; 
that is, a hundred trillion trillion times as elastic as air. 
We stagger under the conception of the luminiferous 
ether, a million million times as elastic as air; but, when 
we are presented with another substance a hundred million 
million times as elastic as ether, we throw off the burden, 
it cannot be borne. And we prefer to conceive of gravity 
as a force acting immediately at a finite distance from a 
finite mass. 

The phenomena of elasticity also force us by logical 
necessity to admit that the atoms (whether we conceive 
of them in Newton’s fashion as perfectly hard little 
masses, or in Boscovich’s fashion as mere centres of 
force, or in the modern fashion as vortex rings) exert 
force without direct contact. This conclusion will not be 
affected by any view taken of Leibnitz’s monadology and 
principle of continuity, being forced upon us by the ex- 
perimental facts of elasticity. 


THE UNSEEN REAL 15 


The cosmical phenomena also force us to the conclu- 
sion that the weight of a body is the result of a force 
exerted upon it by the mass of the earth, without the 
intervention of any material agency. This power of the 
cosmical bodies is omnipresent and constant. What 
Leibnitz meant by saying that the amount of force in the 
universe is constant I do not know. I have not had the 
opportunity to examine; but I cannot believe that he 
meant it in the sense in which it has often been asserted 
in our own days. There are, however, several senses in 
which I do not question its truth. First, the elasticity of 
the ether and its compression are the same in all parts of 
the universe, and probably the same throughout countless 
ages,—although of this latter point we have no direct 
proof. 

Secondly, when a disturbance is produced in this ether, 
say, by the passage of an electric spark, the wave spreads 
in every direction, and, if there be no opaque obstacle, 
forms the surface of a constantly enlarging sphere. The 
surface of the sphere constantly enlarging, the amount of 
motion originally communicated is spread out thinner and 
thinner. But the total amount remains the same, pro- 
vided the elasticity is perfect. If not perfect, a part of 
the motion is retained within the sphere in some other 
fermen. ‘EFhus, as the elasticity of the air is not perfect, a 
wave of sound not only spreads out thinner and fainter as 
it goes, but part of it is lost and left behind in the form of 
infinitesimal warmth and electrical excitement. What I 
referred to as a doctrine of conservation which I cannot 
believe is the assertion that the wave of light or heat 
which passes out beyond the boundaries of telescopic 
vision is returned again to us. Of that we have no 


16 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


proof; and it is even said by some geometers to be 
mathematically incredible. 

But, thirdly, the sum of the gravitating power of the cos- 
mic bodies remains constant. Meteors and comets fall 
into the sun or upon the earth, and slightly increase their 
gravitative force. But the increased force is simply the 
sum of the old forces. And the gravitating power of the 
earth is the same at all distances. The moon is sixty 
times as far from the earth’s centre as we are; and it is 
usually said that gravity there is only z¢50 part as great 
as it is here. It is true in the sense in which it is meant. 
When a wave of light has travelled sixty miles, it is spread 
over 3,600 times as much surface as when it has gone one 
mile, and only appears z¢o5 part as bright. Yet the total 
amount of light remains the same. 

As with this actual force of light undulation, so with 
the potential force of gravity. The earth actually holds 
only one moon in her orbit, but is potentially able to 
attract with the same power any other body coming to 
the same distance as the moon; and at the moon’s dis- 
tance there is 3,600 times as much space for bodies to be 
arrayed. The sum of the power to attract there is there- 
fore 3,600 times sey; that is, it is the same as at the 
earth’s surface. Nor, according to the accepted theory of 
gravitation, could this potential power ever be exhausted 
by increasing its actual exercise. Let moon upon moon 
or planet after planet be bowled gently by the side of our 
earth until she were lost among them, like a gnat in the 
midst of an innumerable swarm of gnats, and still she 
would hold her present moon with precisely as firm a hold 
as at present. 7% 

We find, then, an omnipresent force of elasticity and an 


THE UNSEEN REAL 7 


omnipresent force of gravity; and all the phenomena of 
external nature, which at first seemed to be the solid real- 
ities of the universe, fade, under the searching glance of 
reason guided by science, into that which religious philos- 
ophy had long since declared it,— the inscrutable clothing 
of inscrutable power. That which moves matter without 
the intervention of matter or material agency is consid- 
ered magical or spiritual; yet the force of gravity moves 
matter without the agency of matter. What is it, then, 
but an omnipresent spiritual power, manifesting itself ? 

And matter itself is, by the phenomenon of elasticity, 
and by the nature of nerve-sensation, shown to be a con- 
geries of points without dimensions, acting on each other 
without contact, manifesting, by the actual forces dis- 
played, the presence of almost illimitable powers, poten- 
tial forces slumbering in those mysterious centres. 

We turn back to our first consciousness, aroused in 
sense-perception. We have shown that it gives us, when 
interrogated sharply, the existence of space, time, and 
force,— 2.¢., power-producing motion,— but that we fail to 
get any distinct view of the thing moved. It seems to 
elude analysis, and vanish into the self-contradiction of a 
moving point, or the equally difficult conception of forces 
acting from a centre which has no assignable dimensions, 
but which is driven from point to point in space, and 
drives other centres. 

We now turn to the self side. What is it which thus is 
conscious of sense-perception? Am I, the me which per- 
ceives, also a mere mode of motion? No: I do not rec- 
ognize in myself any direct relation to motion, force, 
space, and time. I see them without, outside of myself. 
I trace the external motion into my body, into my ner- 


18 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


vous system, up to my brain; but I do it by the use of 
sight, touch, and hearing, and not by self-consciousness. 
When I turn my mind upon the act of sense-perception, 
and, attempting to analyze it, come at length to the con- 
templation of the conscious me, then I become self-con- 
scious. I feel at once that I have stepped across a wide 
gulf, the sides of which are separated, to use Hamilton’s 
expression, by the whole diameter of being. I see myself 
related to or connected with my body, which is in space 
and time subject to force, receiving modes of motion, and 
thereby leading to sensation. But the sensation itself is 
not a mode of motion nor apprehended by sensation as 
motion is: it is apprehended by a direct intuition, just as 
space, time, and force are apprehended. In sense-percep- 
tion we think that we see matter moving, or hear sounds, 
or smell odors; and, undoubtedly, the senses do give us 
trustworthy testimony of the existence of something real, 
which to our senses is continuously extended. Sharper 
analysis shows, however, that matter itself is invisible. 
The eye recognizes modes of motion, the ear other modes, 
and so on, But no science can destroy the testimony of 
the internal self, the immediate vision of space, time, 
force, and sense, or show the possibility that either of 
these can be a mode of motion. 

Space is indestructible even in imagination ; so, also, is 
time ; the existence of force as a cause of external motion 
can no more be denied than our own existence. Think 
for a moment of the means by which our great cities are 
now illuminated. Here is a mass of common cast and 
wrought iron wrapped with copper wires ; and within it 
a sphere of similar materials, turning upon a delicately 
poised axis, so arranged that the friction is practically 


THE UNSEEN REAL 19 


nothing: the smallest child could turn the sphere, which 
is separated by a blank space of a finger’s breadth on 
every side from the cast-iron cups in which it turns. Yet 
a powerful steam-engine is set to rotating this sphere. 
At first but little steam is requisite to overcome the 
trifling friction of the axis; but, as the velocity increases, 
more and more power must be applied, so that at the end 
of two or three minutes the whole force of the powerful 
engine is required to turn this little sphere, which at first 
the smallest child could spin. What, then, becomes of 
the force of the engine, which goes on laboring hour after 
hour, putting forth all its strength to accomplish what at 
first seemed so trifling a task? The answer is that the 
power of that engine leaps across the space between the 
sphere and the iron cups, and, being magically converted 
from the mechanical force of the engine into magnetism 
and into an electric current, is led from one end of the 
axis through a long circuit of wire, returning to the other 
end of the axis. In the course of this long circuit, how- 
ever, around the streets of the city, it is interrupted at 
various points, and dispersed in the form of powerful rays 
of light. Nine-tenths of the power of the steam-engine 
are thus in the best forms of the dynamo converted into 
electricity, and the greater part of that electricity con- 
verted into light. But the agent in transforming this 
mechanical force of the engine into the continuous cur- 
rent of electricity through the wire is a finger’s breadth of 
space, which would act just as well were it as perfect a 
vacuum as art can make. The connection is through the 
ether, which is cognizable by not one of the five senses, 
but shows itself to reason as a fluid without recognizable 
friction and under tremendous universal pressure. 


20 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Still more striking evidences of the reality of the un- 
seen are furnished by the consideration of organic life, 
but it would carry us too far from the simplicity of our 
main line of thought to pursue them. As a single illus- 
tration of the facts to which we refer, take the heredity 
which plays so important a part in the theories and specu- 
lations of modern naturalists. All the plants and animals 
of the world are produced from seeds and eggs, and these 
seeds and eggs sprout and hatch into a likeness of both 
parents. Even those naturalists who suppose that the 
difference of species has been produced by gradual varia- 
tion — from a few original types or from one — admit that 
the variation is usually very slow. For many generations, 
even for thousands upon thousands, like produces like. 
What is it in the ovum or ovule which makes it develop 
into the likeness of the parent? Is it a peculiar arrange- 
ment of the atoms of which the little globule consists, or 
is it something inscrutable? Clerk Maxwell argues that 
the little ova or ovules cannot contain a sufficient number 
of atoms to admit of all the variety of arrangements 
requisite to produce the prodigious number of fossil and 
living species of plants and animals. His argument, from 
the limits assigned to the size of atoms, becomes doubly 
strong when we apply it, not to the ovule or ovum, but to 
that exceedingly minute portion of fluid, filtered through 
at least two apparently impervious walls, which, in the 
case of hybrids, is seen to convey to the offspring numer- 
ous peculiarities of the male parent. 

All that is really given by the act of sense-perception, 
apparently revealing to us a world of solid material and 
complex variety, is the existence of a conscious self, float- 
ing in boundless space and boundless time, surrounded 


THE UNSEEN REAL ZI 


and sustained by boundless power. But these it does give; 
and the conscious self refuses to be identified with either 
of the other three, or with any combination of them. 

The object of stating so fully these first truths of con- 
sciousness will, I hope, become manifest in the succeed- 
ing lectures. 


1EE 
THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 


In our first lecture we attempted a rough analysis of 
the contents of consciousness in the first act of simple 
sense-perception. We found that it contained or implied 
the existence of the subject self perceiving something 
external to self, and, at first, of something moving. Next 
we found that all sense-perception has been proved by 
modern science to be, in fact, the perception of motion, 
because all sensible phenomena have been resolved, with 
great probability, into various modes of motion. On a 
sharper analysis of the thing moving, it is resolved into 
manifestations of force in space and time,—three entities 
which entirely elude the outward senses, and whose being 
is avouched to us, precisely as our own being is, by an 
inward perception, or intuition. As we know that we 
ourselves exist, so and by the same sort of evidence we 
know the existence of space, time, and force,— immaterial 
entities seen by the inward eye more clearly, and under- 
stood more perfectly, than anything seen by the outward 
eye can be. Outward sense shows the action of forces ; 
and reason follows up, and shows us that this is all that 
outward sense can show, 

Let us now turn to the first of the entities perceived by 
the inward eye: itis our own conscious self. The conscious 
self is in philosophy called the subject. It is so difficult 


\ 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 23 


to examine, that the school of Positive Philosophy declare 
it impossible. As well, says Comte, may a man attempt 
to look at his own eye as to attempt to look at his own 
mind. On the other hand, the schools of philosophy wor- 
thy of the name unite in declaring that the whole field of 
philosophy lies embosomed in consciousness, and that it is 
only by an examination of the processes going on within 
us that we can arrive at any truth worth knowing. There 
is, however, a great difficulty in analyzing the action of 
the mind. It is well illustrated by the familiar fact that 
uncultivated persons are wholly unable to give the real 
reasons for their daily judgments, even when the judg- 
ments are sound. This inability, it is true, sometimes 
proceeds merely from the lack of words in which to for- 
mulate their knowledge; but it still more frequently 
arises from a want of skill in cross-examining the wit- 
nesses of memory, testifying concerning the process by 
which the judgment was reached. 

Now, in looking at the conscious self, we depend very 
largely upon the memory. Comte is right so far as this: 
that, while the mind is wholly absorbed in some other proc- 
ess, it cannot also be giving its whole strength to the 
analysis of that process. We must, in general, remember 
the process, and, while the memory is still vivid, hold off 
the subjective process as an object of thought. It re- 
quires long practice to attain skill in this dissection of a 
past process; but it requires still greater practice and 
rarer power to be able to observe the action of the mind 
while the process is actually going on. 

The consequence is that very few persons know them- 
selves, in any emphatic sense of the words. Their fancied 
knowledge of themselves is only the knowledge of their 


24 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


own portrait, frequently of a portrait unskilfuily taken. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes pleasantly describes one of the 
results of this self-ignorance}; namely, that in every 
dialogue there are at least six speakers. When, for ex- 
ample, the Secretary of State has a private interview with 
the President, there are at least twelve persons present, 
modifying all that is said: first, the two men themselves 
in their real character; second, the two officials in their 
official characters, which will probably differ more or less 
from the real private character. Here are four. The 
other eight consist of the estimates or pictures of these 
four formed by each of the two men; and eight more 
could easily be described. 

Passing, however, from these pictures of character, pict- 
ures of the subject, to the reality, what is the subject, 
the conscious self? Can it be resolved into either of the 
four elements which we have already found? Space? 
Time? Force? Or the guartum quid, which eludes 
analysis, and makes certain points of space manifest force 
at certain moments of time? 

Space and time are at once excluded. The ego, me, or 
self stands in relation to space and time only through its 
ability to see them by an inward perception, and to meas- 
ure them by real or imagined motion. The life or mani- 
festations of the ego are for the present in time, and 
even connected with the imagination of space; but the 
ego itself is conscious of no dependence on either. 
Neither are its manifestations modes of motion. That 
they may all be connected, for the present, with modes of 
motion in the nervous system of the body is very proba- 
ble, if not fully proved. But this by no means makes 
them consist of modes of motion. Modes of motion are 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 25 


recognizable only through sense-perception : they are out- 
side the sphere of consciousness. The perception of mo- 
tion is the immediate perception of the not-me. Modes 
of consciousness are, on the other hand, recognizable only 
through consciousness. They are thus absolutely discrete 
and heterogeneous from motion. 

Yet there is a large school at the present day of men 
who follow the lead of Comte and of Herbert Spencer in 
a fallacious course of reasoning by which they would 
show that consciousness is only a manifestation of me- 
chanical force. This argument is stated by Comte some- 
what in this form :— 

“Man dies if either deprived of food or if overfed, if 
either frozen or overheated, if either drowned or over- 
dried, if deprived of air or over-supplied with oxygen ; 
and, finally, if a metaphysician were made to stand on his 
head five minutes, all his eternal realities would become 
non-existent. Therefore, man is a part of the material 
universe, and the result of its physical forces.” 

It is strange that intelligent men should be deceived 
by such an evidently fallacious argument which confounds 
the concomitant conditions with the causes of a phenome- 
non. The fallacy is most readily exposed by a carefully 
copied parody of the argument which I have given else- 
where. Here is a mantel clock which, its owner affirms, 
goes by a spring within. No, says a positivist, that is 
not so. It will stop if not oiled and it will stop if over- 
oiled ; it will stop if frozen, it will stop if overheated ; it 
will stop if plunged under water, it will stop if it be ex- 
posed to a dry and dusty air; and it will stop in an 
instant if you turn it upside down. The spring is a con- 
ceit of your imagination. The clock goes by gravity, 


26 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


just temperature, proper hygrometric conditions, and a 
proper feeding with oil. But the owner of the clock 
knows it has a spring in it; and I know that I have a soul 
in me. 

The infinite gulf between the motion of a nerve and the 
consciousness of a sensation can be bridged by no such 
loose and careless engineering. The conscious me is no 
more a part of the body and a result of external agencies 
than the mainspring of the mantel clock is a part of the 
train which it drives or a result of the oscillation of the 
pendulum. 

What, then, is the conscious me, the subjective sub- 
ject? It is a guzntum qutd, recognizable only in con- 
sciousness, just as the guartum quid of matter is recogniz- 
able only through force producing motion. When matter 
ceases to exert any force, it ceases to produce even the 
infinitesimal motions of heat and light, it offers no re- 
sistance to other matter: it ceases to exist to us; we can- 
not follow it even in imagination; it has reverted to the 
abyss of potentiality. So with the conscious subject, if it 
ceases utterly from consciousness; as, for example, it is 
supposed, not only by unbelievers in immortality, but by 
numerous Christians, believers in the sleep of the soul, 
to cease from consciousness at death, and to lie dormant 
for centuries after the body has returned to dust. Then, 
I say, the conscious me ceases to exist to us, and to our 
thought. We cannot follow it even in imagination. It 
has reverted to the abyss of potentiality: its resurrection 
to life cannot be construed to our imagination as other 
than a new creation, more wonderful than the first, be- 
cause in that re-creation the soul would come forth with 
crowded memories of the past. 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 2/7 


Consciousness is the distinguishing characteristic of 
the subject, as motion is of matter, extension of space, 
duration of time. The ego, or subject, has no finite me- 
chanical force. Its manifestations and actions cannot 
be measured in foot pounds. The consumption of phos- 
phorus may indicate, if you please, the amount of move- 
ment in the brain; and thus the brain movement be 
weighed in foot pounds against other motions. But that 
brain movement is not a measure of consciousness, not 
even of its amount, and much less of its character and 
value. A blockhead or a villain may consume as much 
phosphorus every twenty-four hours as a genius or a saint. 
Consciousness is measured more nearly by quality than 
by quantity of brain-work. The finer quality of work 
may require finer tools; and thus it may be true, as Dr. 
J. C. Warren thought it, that a man of genius has a 
brain of finer and more delicate organization. 

But consciousness is not mere motion, nor is mental 
action measurable by physical force: it is not the result 
of the exertion of force, except as we use a description 
of external nature as a typical expression of the facts of 
internal consciousness. (And this appears, by the way, 
to spiritual philosophy to be one of the main uses of 
external nature; namely, to furnish types whereby to 
express spiritual things.) P 

What, then, are the faculties of the ego, as revealed in 
consciousness? Psychologists of every school have for 
a century past included them in three,— sight, feeling, 
thls es 

By sight we mean the power of perceiving or knowing. 
This seems the first and fundamental thing in con- 
sciousness. What is consciousness but knowing, or co- 


28 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ordinating knowledge? We have been in the first and 
in the present lecture asking, What do we see in every 
conscious moment? taking it for granted that we see. 
We perceive external sensations, and perceive that they 
are external. We perceive space and time and motion. 
We perceive the existence of force. We perceive the 
existence of cause, a genus of which force is a species. 
We perceive that we perceive. All these are forms of 
direct sight, which I give, not as exhausting, but simply 
as illustrating, the power of direct or immediate percep- 
tion which I call sight. 

But we also perceive that we feel. Even sensations 
are pleasant or unpleasant. It is impossible for us to 
imagine ourselves in a state of consciousness absolutely 
devoid of feeling; that is, in which we should neither 
be pleased nor displeased, contented nor discontented, 
soothed nor annoyed, interested nor disgusted. Some 
slight degree of feeling of some kind must accompany 
every state of consciousness imaginable by us, because 
some degree has accompanied every state experienced 
by us. So far as our experience goes, every state of 
consciousness includes a state of feeling; and a state 
of absolute indifference is like a state of unstable equi- 
librium in mechanics, only capable of being maintained 
for an inappreciable instant. 

The feelings culminate in desires which are but intensi- 
fied feelings, and the desires prompt to volition. Will is 
the highest action of the ego, and the most difficult of 
analysis. But at every conscious moment we not only 
are percipient in the intellect and recipient in the heart, 
but accipient or excipient in the will; that is, we are act- 
ing or refraining from action. 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 29 


The simplest action of the ego is the mere act of atten- 
tion or refusing attention. In the momentary sphere of 
consciousness a thousand things present themselves, to 
the external sense, to bodily sensation, to memory, to 
imagination, to reason ; and the ego, the proper self within, 
chooses to which it shall give its principal attention. 

This power of the mind to concentrate its forces on one 
part of the sphere of consciousness, and remand the other 
parts to the abyss of potentiality, differs greatly in differ- 
ent men; but it is to some extent always present, and is 
one of the main differences between sanity and insanity. 
Of course, it is finite in a finite being. If a fly flew into 
the room, it would of course be in the power of any one of 
us to withhold attention from it. But if, on the other 
hand, a hand-grenade with a smoking fuse came in at the 
window, or a meteoric stone descended through the roof, 
it would be impossible for any one to refuse attention to 
it. Limited, however, as the power is, it is nevertheless 
a real power, and is the grandest faculty of our nature. 
In that power of directing and concentrating attention 
lies the first element of success, and of greatness, in what- 
ever department of thought or action. 

The second action of the conscious self through will 
power is the command of the body. Through involun- 
tary muscular movements the attention of the infant is 
early called to its being in a body capable of motion. As 
I said in the first lecture, this is probably the earliest state 
of consciousness, the consciousness of bodily motion. As 
the conscious self comes to higher activity, it wills that 
some of these involuntary motions shall be repeated ; and 
they are repeated. How, by what agency, the child does 
not know. Nor does the most thorough student of the 


30 POSTULATES ‘OF REVELATION 


physiological action of the brain and nervous system even 
to-day know, any better than the infant, how the immeas- 
urable gulf between consciousness and the material body 
is spanned. I pronounce the word “speech,” or I write it 
upon this sheet of paper. The chemist and the mechanic 
may explain the nature of ink and of my stylographic pen. 
The anatomist may describe with minute accuracy the 
movement of every muscle, and show through what nerves 
the commands come to those muscles. The physiologist 
may fancy that he can tell from what particular set of 
nerve-cells the command originated. But not one of them 
can tell, or will probably ever be able, in this world, to 
tell how the decision of my will started those nerve-cells 
to their peculiar action. The will, the conscious self in 
the act of volition, has no measurable force, no power to 
be developed into motion. But it has a power to develop 
the dormant power of the nerve-cells into a motion which, 
in its turn, shall develop or arouse the dormant power 
of the muscular fibre. Still more wonderful, this decision 
of the conscious will decides the direction and amount of 
force which shall be brought into play by each muscle. 
How this thing is done we know not. The lower ani- 
mals perform the same thing, although not in such com- 
plicated modes. Agassiz opened a snapping tortoise’s egg 
some weeks before it was ready to hatch; and the young 
tortoise, although but three-fourths ready for its entrance 
upon outer life, snapped at the lead-pencil which was 
brought near it. The Darwinist says that this simply 
proves that the young tortoise had been practising snap- 
ping at pencil-points for a million of years, so that the habit 
was inveterate,— practising, of course, in the person of its 
fathers. But this spreading of the marvel over a million 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE al 


of years does nothing to diminish its marvellous charac- 
ter. A good draughtsman sees a figure which is new and 
striking, or sees a child at play take a new and particu- 
larly pleasing attitude ; and in a moment he sketches with 
his pencil a correct outline. The draughtsman knows 
nothing about the action of his nerve-cells and muscles. 
He wills that his pencil shall reproduce a new outline, 
and it does it. The Fuegian Indian, wholly untutored, 
hears a foreign word, containing, perhaps, sounds which 
do not occur in his native language, yet he pronounces it 
accurately at the first effort. All this control of the mind 
over the body is magic. It cannot be reduced to the nexus 
of physical causes and effects. It is not a manifestation of 
force, but is simply a guidance of force. The will does 
not come under the categories of external nature: itis not 
a cause, in the physical sense of the word. It lies in the 
realm of consciousness; and we do not know and cannot 
imagine the mode in which it reaches over the gulf of 
separation, and guides the forces of the external world. 
The materialistic philosophy attempts to make the will 
simply a part of the nexus of physical causes and effects, 
and thus to get rid Of the necessity of confessing magic. 
But the attempt is unsuccessful, because it is impossible 
to construe to consciousness the proposition that con- 
sciousness, or any of its modes, is a mode of manifesta- 
tion of material motion. The two things are separated 
“by the whole diameter of being”; and the materialistic 
philosopher is simply beclouding himself with words to 
which he cannot attach an intelligible sense, when he at- 
tempts to make them one. | 

To return to the first faculty,— that of sight,— let us 
consider for a few moments the question whether we can 


32 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


depend upon sight. This is the first and most impor- 
tant point to be settled in philosophy, whether we can 
trust our own faculties. But it is a question that settles 
itself, when properly stated. In all departments of human 
knowledge and of intellectual investigation the solution 
of a problem is never really possible until the problem is 
clearly and correctly stated; and the clear, correct state- 
ment is usually a great step toward the solution. 

Can we believe what we believe? can we see what we 
see? can we hear what we hear? The questions answer 
themselves in the affirmative. To answer in the negative 
is to deny our own existence, and to deny one’s own ca- 
pability of denying. Sober philosophy proceeding to that 
step becomes mad reverie and senseless jargon. 

We see what we see: the real question is, What do we 
see? Take as an illustration the act of literal sight with 
the bodily eye. The new-born child turns his eye toward 
the window, and sees, let us say, a green tree waving in the 
wind just outside. He actually sees a something green in 
motion, and knows that it is not himself. And that is all 
that he actually sees when in mature life he looks out at 
the same object, although he may then think he sees that 
it is a tree of a definite species, size, distance from the 
house, etc. But these details are inferences, judgments ; 
and the actual direct sense-perception is simply some- 
thing of mottled green in motion, not himself, not his own 
body, but outside his body. This last point, the distin- 
guishing of sight from vision, is more difficult, but in a 
sane mind always possible. In fact, the organ of vision, 
the expansion of the optic nerve, has three functions in 
connection with the mind (and, mutatis mutandis, what I 
am about to say of this nerve may be said of every part of 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 33 


the nervous system, brain andall). It receives impressions 
normally from without, which cause sensations ; it receives 
normally a gentler impression from within, from the men- 
tal action, and this gives vividness to memory and imagi- 
nation of sensible things; thirdly, it is capable of abnor- 
mal excitement through accident or disease, giving rise 
to pseudo-sensations, to which memory and imagination 
sometimes lend form, thus producing visions and subjec- 
tive impressions, as of hearing music, tasting flavors, etc. 
But these visions are distinguishable by a sound mind 
from the real normal impressions from without. The 
sound mind knows that it perceives something green ex- 
ternal to itself, external even to its own body. What that 
something is, it judges by inference; but that there is some- 
thing there is the direct testimony of consciousness, and 
cannot be denied without opening the door to insanity and 
turning reason adrift. 

But it is said that this something may not be at all like 
our sensation. Of course, it is not: the sensation is a fact 
of consciousness, the something external is a fact in the 
external world. Between them there may be a corre- 
spondence, but there cannot be a similarity. What of it? 
That does not invalidate the testimony of consciousness 
that there is something there which produces the sensation 
which we call the perception of a green color. It is a 
mere quibble upon words to say the grass is not green. 
It is precisely like denying that this tuning-fork is E-flat. 
The fork is not the vibration of the air, much less is the 
fork the particular musical sensation which vibrations of 
that particular frequency give to a musical ear. But the 
fork, if set in vibration, will give vibrations which will pro- 
duce in a musical ear the sensation called E-flat. There- 


34 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


fore, the fork is called E-flat. In like manner the leaf of the 
tree responds in the light of the sun to particular vibra- 
tions which give to a healthy eye the perception of a color 
which is called green; and that is all that is meant by 
saying the leaf is green. The eye does not deceive you. 
It says that here is something which will produce in every 
healthy human mind, turning toward it in common day- 
light, a healthy normal eye, a peculiar sensation known to 
us as the perception of a green color. And this is true. 
The green tree does look green to ninety-six or ninety- 
eight persons out of every hundred; nay, to even a 
greater percentage of women. To say what looks green 
is not green, is a quibble, an attempt to make a new mean- 
ing to the word. All that we know or can know of the 
material world through the senses, without reason, is that 
it produces sensations in us; but that we do know, and 
know with certainty. So far from the eye not giving a 
true report in giving color, it gives a report which modern 
science shows to be richer in content than was formerly 
dreamed. The chemist thrusts a fragment of an unknown 
substance into his Bunsen flame, and instantly tells from 
the play of colors in the blaze the chemical nature of the 
substance. The green leaf is shown by its greenness to 
have its particles so arranged as to make light reflected 
from it vibrate at a certain frequency. 

All other forms of sense-perception are in like manner 
truthful. We may carelessly misinterpret the report of 
sight, and, in Charles Darwin’s expressive phrase, “fill the 
gaps of knowledge with loose and unfounded speculation.” 
But, if we attentively, carefully consider what it is that we 
see, we may be certain that we see something, and some- 
thing real. And all processes of the intellect are simply 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 35 


processes of direct sight, internal or external. Reasoning, 
as an intellectual process, is the direct perception of the 
interrelation of truths ; and, as an art, it is the arrange- 
ment of truths in such a mental order as to make their 
interrelation visible. He who argues to show the inabil- 
ity of the human mind to attain or perceive truth is, with 
gross inconsistency, himself depending upon the veracity 
of his own internal sight to see the validity of each step 
of his fallacious argument. 

But it is said that we can, after all, only see things as 
they appear to us. Again I enter the demurrer. What 
of it? Of course, we can see things only as we see 
them. That is plain enough. And our vision is very 
limited. That is plain enough. But, as far as we see, we 
see. Is not that also self-evident? A child sees in a 
circle not a thousandth part of the wonderful truths which 
the mathematical genius of ages has evolved out of the 
simple figures ; but the child certainly sees the circle, the 
equidistance of its centre from all parts of the boundary, 
the equal curvature of all parts of the boundary, and the 
equality of ail its diameters, and this is seeing something 
real and something valuable. The highest geometer does 
not see in the circle all its relations. From century to 
century new truths are evolved from that simplest of 
curved figures ; but all that the geometer Has seen he has 
SEEN. How what he has seen appears to the Intellect 
which sees all things, of course, the geometer cannot 
know. But of this the geometer is certain: that all 
human mathematics must be included in the knowledge of 
an Infinite Intellect. Absolutely perfect knowledge of a 
circle can never make the equality of its diameters appear 
a falsehood, or reduce the ratio of its circumference and 
diameter to any exact numerical equivalent. 


36 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


So with all other human knowledge in all departments. 
It is the knowledge of relations; but, when carefully 
analyzed and corrected, it is a real knowledge of actual 
relations. It is the knowledge of the relations as they 
appear to us; but that is a real knowledge as far as it 
goes. It is knowledge of the relation of the relations to 
a finite perception. 

To deny that the human mind can come to any real 
knowledge of the universe is, then, only to justify Cicero’s 
remark,—that there is no opinion so absurd that is not held 
by some philosopher as truth. In this case the absurdity 
is self-evident ; and yet it has frequently been maintained 
that we know that we know nothing,— that is, we do not 
even know that we know nothing, and that we must doubt 
all things, even doubt whether we doubt all things. 

To this we are reduced by the doctrine drawn from 
Kant and Swedenborg,—I think by misinterpretation of 
their language,— the doctrine that space and time are sim- 
ply regulative forms of human thought; a doctrine ren- 
dered popular among English-speaking people by Carlyle’s 
weird prose poem, “Sartor Resartus’’; a doctrine erring 
on the side of idealism as greatly as the doctrine of the 
identification of space with bodily extensiveness on the 
side of materialism. 

Space and time, instead of being as Teufelsdréckh puts 
it, the clothing of the material world, are the limitless 
atmosphere in which the material world is immersed. 
The material world exists, so far as we can see, only for 
the sake of its symbolism. It is a language whereby we 
can express to each other our thoughts and feelings about 
space, time, and spirit; and we can thus use it, only 
because it is a language wherein we are addressed by the 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE a7 


Infinite Spirit whose thoughts it embodies, whose power 
and love it manifests, 

To the reality of these things seen by the inner eye — 
space, time, motion, force, spirit, or self—and to the 
reality of our knowledge concerning them, all the experi- 
ence of life bears an ever-accumulating testimony. Her- 
bert Spencer resents with indignation the insinuation that 
he supposed there could be any vice in the constitution of 
things. Other writers, of even more pronounced mate- 
rialism, have affirmed that they rest with implicit con- 
fidence on the everlasting harmony of the movements of 
nature. We cannot live without that faith: even the 
earthquake does not destroy the faith of the survivor in 
the stability of the earth on which they re-erect the fallen 
city. Peirce analyzed this confidence in the uniformity 
of nature into a moral confidence in the truthfulness of 
God. A student asked him one day in my hearing, 
How do we know that the sun will rise to-morrow? And 
he instantly replied, Exactly as we know everything 
else that we do know; on the veracity of God. To sup- 
pose that the course of nature will be interrupted without 
a sufficient reason is to suppose the Source of the uni- 
verse unreasonable and false. 

To suppose that the faculties of man inevitably and 
continually deceive him, so that no carefulness of analysis 
and of scrutiny can ever make him justly certain that he 
knows anything, is not only, as I have already shown, an 
intellectual self-contradiction, an inconceivable intellect- 
ual absurdity, but it is also a denial of our highest moral 
ideals, a making of ourselves more truthful and noble than 
the Infinite Source of the universe in which we are but a 
part. 


38 


POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Oh, never deem 
This world a dream 

Of things which are not what they seem; 
For He who hurled 
Through space this world, 

And the starry skies above unfurled, 
Can never lie, 
And earth and sky 

Are what He wrote for the human eye. 
The fool, indeed, 
Or child, may read 

Only the letters with careless heed, 
And fail to see 
What mystery 

Contained in the sacred whole may be; 
But he whose sight 
Is open to light 

Finds the page with heavenly glories bright. 
Though the clearest ray 
Of the infinite day, 

Through this elder Scripture beaming alway, 
Gives the steadfast hope 
That there yet shall ope 

On our stronger vision a wider scope ; — 
When through Christ’s grace 
We, face to face, 

Shall see what passeth all time and space; 
When the brightest dream 
Of the present shall seem 

But darkness beside that immortal beam. 
Yet bright also 
Is the present glow 

Of the glories of heaven that round us flow; 
And on Nature’s face 
We still may trace 

The tokens of Godhead in every place. 


THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 


In every line 
God’s power divine, 
His love and wisdom, steadily shine. 
In His hand we lie, 
And with raptured eye 


Read His glorious truth on earth and sky. 


39 


Tie 
THE INFINITE KNOWABLE. 


We endeavored in our second lecture to show that 
the first fundamental faculty of the human being, of the 
real self within us, is the faculty of sight; that is, of 
perceiving truth. This faculty corresponds to external 
vision; it is the internal vision by which external vision 
is analyzed and understood; it is the internal vision by 
which we see the entities without us, of space, time, and 
mechanical force producing motion, and of a fourth some- 
thing which moves, and gives us thereby our notions of 
motion, figure, color, hardness, etc. It is the internal 
vision by which we see also the entities of the microcosm, 
the powers of intellect and feeling and will, and of an 
internal fifth something, the self, the ego, the me, the 
soul, the subject which thus sees what is without and 
what is within itself. 

We endeavored further to show that what we thus 
clearly see is something to be seen. The external world 
is not a delusion, but a reality: we can know of it only 
its sensible properties and its time and space relations ; 
but there is nothing more that we need to know. When 
I see a piece of red granite, I see only a something that 
looks red to me; but I see in the peculiar tone and 
variety of its color that it is a something which is very 
hard, will stand firm under great pressure, is composed 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE 41 


of three kinds of crystals, each with such and such sensi- 
ble properties, that under fire it would behave so and so, 
that it is capable of a high polish, that it is a portion of 
the oldest rock on the globe found in substantially similar 
form in such and such chains of hills, that its crystals on 
‘decomposition would yield such and such gases, such and 
such metals, and so on, and so on. What more do we 
want? We see something which has such and_ such 
physical properties; that is, which could, under the right 
conditions, manifest to us such and such sensible prop- 
erties. The idealist must grant this, and the materialist 
has no right to ask the realist to grant more. But the 
realist has the right to ask the materialist to grant that 
the other faculties are as trustworthy as those of sense- 
perception. I see the immaterial entities of space, time, 
spirit, and force. I see them by the inward sense even 
more clearly than I can perceive the sensations which 
reveal the existence of matter. No other man’s blindness 
can prevent my seeing these immaterial and spiritual 
entities. The materialist’s denial of the trustworthiness 
of my sight can no more make it untrustworthy than 
the color-blind man’s denial of the perception of red 
could destroy the reality of my vision of those lower 
rays of the spectrum. 

The reality of the soul’s power of perceiving, of com- 
ing into immediate contact with and vision of realities, 
having been vindicated, the next question is whether it 
can lay hold of the Infinite, the Absolute, and the Uncon- 
ditioned. This question is one of those most earnestly 
debated by metaphysicians. One class have zealously 


taken the negative, the other the affirmative, in regard | 


to all three divisions of the question. Our faculties, say 


\ 


42 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


one class, are, of course, finite and limited: they cannot 
possibly lay hold of the infinite, the boundless. Our 
faculties are tentative; they attain only approximations ; 
they can never comprehend the absolute, the perfect. 
Our faculties act only under narrow conditions: they 
cannot seize upon the unconditioned. 

Yet the very fact that we can discuss such a question 
is a fact of sublime significance. A child of less than 
four years, wholly unaware that I was overhearing her 
soliloquy, said one morning in a pensive reverie, “‘ How 
much easier it is to think than it is to do! Now, witha 
dog it is just the other way.” The human faculties excel 
those of the brutes most notably in this,— that the brutes 
so seldom and so feebly manifest any power of transcend- 
ing, in their imagination, their faculties of action. 

The saving efficacy of Christian faith lies in its giving 
us a vivid sense of the presence of an all-loving but a just 
and holy Father, who can forgive the penitent, but who 
will inflexibly bring punishment upon those who choose 
evil. 

The debate of the highest importance in all ages of 
human society is, therefore, on the evidences of Chris- 
tianity, not in the narrow sense in which the phrase is 
sometimes used, but in the broad sense, including a dis- 
cussion of those things which Christianity assumes or 
takes for granted to be true, the more important of 
which are the being of God, the reality of his moral 
law, and the existence of a life after death,— an immortal 
life in which the sanctity of that law shall be more fully 
avouched. 

It is by some denied that man has any faculties by 
which he can attain any knowledge on such questions. 


— ——— a 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE 43 


And yet man not only transcends, in his imagination, 
all his faculties of action and all his imagination of the 
possibilities of action, but he transcends in his reason 
all his imagination of the possibilities of imagination. 

Who can imagine points in space which are neither in, 
above, nor below the plane of the horizon? Who can 
imagine epochs in time which neither were before nor 
will be after the present instant? Yet the mathematician 
can locate any number of such points, determine any num- 
ber of such epochs, and by rigid demonstration show the 
distance of the centre of the earth from each point at 
each epoch. What his imagination pronounces to be ab- 
solutely impossible, his reason thus surveys and measures 
as though really existent. 

In like manner, in philosophy, the reason asserts with 
emphasis the existence and properties of that which the 
imagination is powerless to construct. 

Yet even reason cannot penetrate into the ultimate re- 
lationship of space and time to spirit. Our own sense of 
the ineffable supremacy of the finite spirit over finite time 
and space disposes us to consider the possibility that the 
Infinite Spirit, by his omnipresence, constitutes space ; by 
his eternity, time. But herein we rise as far above the 
stretch of reason as reason rises above the flight of imagi- 
nation. And this power of dimly peering into regions 
transcending the infinite as much as the infinite tran- 
scends the imaginable, what a sublime power it is! How 
emphatically it affirms the reality of our apprehension of 
the infinite, the absolute, and the unconditioned! The 
men who deny our knowledge of religious verities, in their 
very denial of the possibility of our laying hold upon 
these high objects, show that they do lay hold of them. 


44 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


If they did not, if the incapacity of the human mind was 
what men of that school of thought declare, they could 
not argue upon it: they would be forced to content them- 
selves with a blank denial that they understood anything 
about the question. Their comprehension of the terms of 
the question demonstrates that they have an apprehen- 
sion of the meaning of the terms. There is, then, in the 
human intellect, finite as it is, a power of seeing that the 
Infinite at least exists. 

In the ego, the self-determining subject, lies something 
akin to the Unconditioned and the Infinite,— something 
which, in the midst of its conditioned thought, appre- 
hends the existence and attributes of the unconditioned. 

We are, however, told by writers of the Hamiltonian 
school that we can attribute no attributes to the infinite, 
or to the absolute, or to the unconditioned. The same 
remark was made by the first great Christian philosopher, 
Scotus Erigena, in the ninth century. We can affirm 
nothing of the infinite, says Scotus, because every affirm- 
ation is of the nature of an equation between the subject 
and the predicate; and nothing can be set in equation 
against the infinite. Yet Scotus goes on to predicate 
excess. An affirmation may be of inequality as well as 
of equality. God is not great, he says, because he is 
more than all greatness; nor good, because he is more 
than all goodness; nor wise, because he is more than 
all wisdom. In like manner, Herbert Spencer asks 
whether there may not be a mode of existence transcend- 
ing consciousness as much as that transcends uncon- 
sciousness, 

The word “infinite” is used in three different but 
cognate significations: first, in the Hamiltonian sense, 


/~ 


LL 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE 45 


the mere etymological sense, as if from a past participle, 
—not finite, not bounded, indefinitely large; secondly, 
in a stricter metaphysical sense, not only indefinitely 
large and unbounded, but, in the direction under con- 
sideration, incapable of being bounded,— not only infinite, 
but, to coin a word, infiniendum; thirdly, in its highest 
sense, the Infinite, that which is incapable of definition 
or boundary in any direction. To this third meaning of 
Infinite apply more nearly than to the others the denials 
of the Agnostic school. But the reason does not clearly 
demand the existence of an entity having infinitude in 
every attribute. The reason does not demand therefore 
the existence of the Infinite as thus described. For 
aught that reason can see, the infinite spirit, the infinite 
space, and the infinite time may be heterogeneous co- 
existences, of which neither has any of the attributes of 
the other. 

But with regard to infinite space we can certainly make 
affirmations. It is in all its parts space; it has every- 
where its three dimensions; it everywhere offers a fields 
for coextension. So with infinite time we certainly can 
make similar affirmations. Let us, however, observe that 
many modern writers (led partly by the Kantian doctrine 
of the forms of thought, and partly, perhaps, influenced by 
a curiously literal translation of a sentence in the Apoc- 
alypse into our modern tongues) make a distinction be- 
tween boundless, infinite time and eternity, using the 
word “eternity” to indicate an independence of time, just 
as we use the words “ideal” or “imaginary” to indicate 
independence of both space and time. 

Let us now observe that, if we take infinity in the sec- 
ond sense,— that is, real infinity in given directions and 


46 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


on given attributes,— there is a great practical difference 
in the ease and certainty with which we may argue. Not 
to confuse ourselves with logical terms, we may roughly 
state the difference in this way,—that we can argue to in- 
finity much more safely and certainly than we can argue 
from it. This remark holds true in whatever department 
of thought we may be moving, whether in simple geom- 
etry or in the highest and most intricate theological prob- 
lems. Let us take as an example the hyperbolic spiral. 
A pair of shears stands open, one blade horizontal, the 
other in a vertical plane above it, making an angle of 64°. 
Let us suppose the blades of such a length that, if the 
upper were closed down upon the under one, its point 
would describe an arc five inches long. Now, suppose 
that, as this upper blade comes down, both blades lengthen 
in precise proportion to their approach. That is, when 
they make an angle of 32°, they are twice as long as at 
first; when an angle of 16°, they are four times as long; 
when at 8°, eight times as long; when at 4°, sixteen 
times as long; when 2°, thirty-two times as long; when 
at 1°, sixty-four times as long; and so on forever. When 
at any angle, say 1°, if the increase of length in the blades 
were to stop, the points would be separated by an arc of 
one-sixty-fourth the curvature, but of 64 times the radius 
of the arc at first. It would therefore be an arc of the 
same length, five inches; and there would be an arc of 
that length always separating the points of the blades. 
But, as the angle grew smaller, the arc would erow 
straighter, and the points of the blades grow farther 
apart. At the distance of a few hundred feet the distance 
would be practically five inches, and from that point out 
through infinite space remain five inches. The end of 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE Ay 


the lower blade would run out on a straight line, the end 
of the upper blade on a hyperbolic spiral; and it has been 
easy for you to perceive with certainty that this hyperbolic 
spiral runs out into a form which, in the infinite distance, 
becomes a parallel straight line five inches above the first. 
But, go now in imagination out to an infinite, or even to 
a moderately great, distance, and see. Here are two 
parallel straight lines five inches apart: one is really 
straight, and the other, you are told, is a curve which 
runs back in this apparently straight form for miles and 
miles and miles, and then becomes a curve. What of it ? 
Can you by any imagination, or effort of reasoning, tell 
what kind of acurve it is? Where is its finite origin? 
What the law of its formation? Not at all, there is infin- 
ity in the premises given you; and from infinite premises 
it is seldom possible to draw finite conclusions. 

Numerous examples might easily be given illustrating 
in a similar manner the fact that in the science of analyti- 
cal geometry, and of the differential and integral calculus 
as applied to space, it is comparatively easy to pass (by 
the most rigid and certain deductions) from the relations 
of finites to the relations of mathematical infinites,— not 
simply of mathematical indefinitely large quantities, but 
mathematical infinites of an infinite order,—but very 
much more difficult to pass from the relation of infinites 
to that of finites. I have elsewhere shown that the same 
thing holds in theology, and that a majority of the theo- 
logical errors and fantasies of outgrown sects in Christen- 
dom have actually grown from or been supported by 
arguments drawn from the infinity of God.* And, even at 
the present hour, the most fascinating of modern specula- 


* The Natural Sources of Theology, page 13. 


48 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tions in science, philosophy, and religion, are insecurely 
built upon deductions from premises involving infinity. 
The sciences of space and time —that is, mathematical cal- 
culus — show and illustrate the fact that, in order to argue 
from premises involving infinity, very peculiar precautions 
against error are necessary. With these precautions, we 
may perhaps argue safely, and come to indisputable con- 
clusions; but without them the liability to error is a 
thousand-fold greater when arguing from infinity than 
when arguing to it. 

The philosophers who most earnestly deny the reality 
of our knowledge of the Infinite, and forbid us to make 
any affirmations concerning it, are continually making 
affirmations themselves and arguing from them. I have 
mentioned Scotus Erigena’s saying,—that the Deity can 
be called neither wise nor good, because he is more 
than wisdom and more than goodness. In this earnest 
denial of the possibility of making an affirmation Scotus 
was affirming more than all affirmations. 

The modern thinker, opposing theology in his earnest 
advocacy of his doctrine of the unknowable, simply repro- 
duces the doctrine of Augustine, of Erigena, and other 
Christian philosophers concerning the inscrutability of 
God. Indeed, in the Pentateuch, a writing of antiquity, 
but certainly of earnest theism, the same doctrine is sub- 
limely stated. Thou canst see my presence, the Lord 
is represented as saying: no manner of similitude is 
shown thee; but thou recognizest my presence by the 
operations and results of my word. 

Herbert Spencer is indignant at theologians who attrib- 
ute consciousness to God. May there not be a mode 
of being, he cries, as much transcending consciousness 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE 49 


as consciousness transcends unconsciousness? Of course 
there may ; and, if Mr. Spencer had known anything of the 
Christian theology which he speaks of so contemptuously, 
he would have known that all Christian theologians of any 
elevation of thought have acknowledged it. It is the con- 
stantly reiterated statement of the Hebrew Scripture that 
God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, that his ways 
are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher 
than the earth. In Agassiz’s contemplations of God in 
the cosmos, that great naturalist, whose childlike relig- 
ious trust in the paternal character of God made him 
undervalued by modern thinkers tinctured with material- 
istic and atheistic philosophy, declares emphatically that 
we can form no image or picture to ourselves of the 
divine consciousness, because the intellection of God is 
not conditioned in time or space. Agassiz drew by in- 
duction from the cosmos what philosophy draws from the 
microcosm; and the prophets declare by inspiration that 
in the divine mind. there is no tentative, progressive ad- 
vance of knowledge, but that in that intellect the end is 
known from the beginning, and every detail is simulta- 
neously conceived. This mode of being, of course, is as 
much above our human consciousness, or any picture of 
consciousness which human imagination can draw, as con- 
sciousness is above unconsciousness. Nevertheless, this 
mode of the Divine Being includes rather than excludes 
consciousness. Conscious spirit, possessing knowledge, 
wisdom, power, and love, is the highest thing that we can 
imagine. It thus becomes, as Aristotle has shown, our 
fittest expression and symbol of the highest being which 
reason can apprehend. 

Of course, we are not to attribute to the Infinite Being 


50 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


the limitations of our personality. We are not to suppose 
his thoughts are, like ours, necessarily consecutive ; nor 
his love, like ours, necessarily partial. But, in imitation of 
the processes of reasoning in lower things, we may take 
the attributes of personality, and imagine them indefinitely 
extended, and judge from their behavior under this indef- 
inite extension whether they can bear extension to infin- 
ity. If not, they are not attributes of the Infinite. But, if 
yes, then they are attributes of the Infinite and Absolute. 

The indefinite expansion of the field of intellectual con- 
sciousness may be conceived without necessitating the 
slightest breach of the laws of intellectual perception. 
And, when the expansion is infinite, we arrive without 
any violence to reason or imagination at a point above im- 
agination, but real to reason, —the existence of an Infi- 
nite Being to whom is known all that may be known, all 
that is and all that is not, all that is possible and all that 
is impossible, to whom the knowable and the unknowable 
are alike lost in the known. . 

But the greatest difficulty is usually felt in reconciling 
the conception of love with the existence of the Infinite, 
That God is wisdom seems to many persons easier to be- 
lieve than that God is love. Yet, when we consider the 
matter fully, there is no real wisdom without love, the de- 
sire to confer happiness on sentient beings. Imagine this 
growing and increasing in the mind and heart of one who 
is growing in wisdom and power. With the increase of 
wisdom, such a mind would see a gradation in kinds of 
happiness ; and the desire would constantly be for giving 
purer kinds of happiness. It is easy to see that this 
increasing beneficence, accompanying increasing wisdom 
and increasing power, involves no self-destructive or self- 


THE INFINITE KNOWABLE Si 


contradictory elements as it passes on to indefinite expan- 
sion, It may therefore be reasonably predicated of the 
Infinite. 

We have, therefore, no philosophical hindrances, but, 
on the contrary, strong philosophical helps on the path 
to accepting the teachings of the Jewish and the Chris- 
tian Scriptures concerning God. Neither the finiteness 
of man nor the infinity of God presents any real difficulty 
to the partial knowledge of God by man. On the other 
hand, we have, before entering on any detailed examina- 
tion either of the world without or of the world within, 
the strongest presumption from this preliminary survey 
of the general field that the theism of the Hebrews is 
philosophically true. The very nature of the soul is to 
see, to feel, to will. Among the truths which it sees is 
the truth of its own superiority to the external world, and 
its own inferiority to the great First Cause of the universe. 
It sees that the Cause of the universe is infinite, and can- 
not be comprehended in any finite mind; but in the very 
act of seeing this it sees the existence and the infinitude 
of this cause. 

It sees that infinite as the Supreme Cause is, that cause 
is perfect, absolute, self-existent, self-determined, existing 
in a mode unconditioned and uncontrolled,—a mode in- 
conceivable to our imagination, but seen by our reason to 
be the mode in which God exists. 

The mind cannot see that it is limited except by tran- 
scending its limits. Absolutely unthinkable is void, is ab- 
solutely dark: we cannot peer into it, we cannot know it 
or talk about it, except as we may of yellow sounds. The 
absolutely unimaginable may be brought under the do- 
main of reason, but the absolutely unthinkable can be 


52 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


brought under no faculty of the mind. The First Cause is 
not absolutely unthinkable. On the contrary, it is thrust 
upon our attention at every moment of our higher life. 
No man can speculate at all without running back in his 
speculation to the First Cause, absolutely unimaginable, 
. but always an object of thought, thinkable, and by that 
thought separated from the conditioned and exalted to the 
unconditioned. We think him to be, although we cannot 
think what or how he is, except that he is infinite in the 
attributes of real being, absolute in all perfections, and un- 
conditioned in his existence and action. 


IV. 
EEN ALG Ge aUisy ha: 


THE strict force of our argument in the preceding lect- 
ure was to show that we could by reasoning, if carefully 
conducted, arrive at sound conclusions concerning the In- 
finite, the Absolute, and Unconditioned, and that there was 
no objection arising from the infinity of God or the rela- 
tivity of human knowledge insuperably in the way of our 
ascribing to him the spiritual faculties of wisdom, love, 
and will. But we also showed that it is logically safer to 
argue from the finite to the infinite than from the infinite 
to the finite. 

By what induction, therefore, from the finite shall we 
show the infinite wisdom of the Deity? Is there any 
induction that is valid? Two lines of induction have been 
followed by theologians in all ages. Socrates, in the 
Memorabilia of Xenophon, gives us admirable examples 
of the first. He shows that the human frame, and par- 
ticularly the human eye, is built with such an admirable 
adaptation to its purposes as to indicate a wise Creator. 
This is known as the teleological argument. It was pecul- 
larly suited to the Greek mind: their very language 
indicated in the recognized meanings of the word Zéos, 
that they identified cause and effect in the adaptation of 
a means to an end. If we attempt to formulate this 
argument from design into a canon of induction, it might 


54 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


run something like this: When an organ is found ef- 
fecting a result, the presumption is that it was created to 
effect that result; and the presumption is strengthened 
in the compound ratio of the complication of the organ, 
the efficacy of its action, the value of the result, and our 
inability to see other uses for the organ or better means 
of effecting the result, the presumption thus being readily 
raised to moral certainty. 

The other line is the morphological. It was not fully 
developed by early writers, although finely stated by 
Cicero as a Stoic argument, but has been made of more 
importance by men of our own day. A magnificent ex- 
ample of it is found in the Introduction to Agassiz’s 
“Essay on Classification,” prefixed to his “ Contributions 
to the Natural History of the United States”’; also in the 
lectures of Professor Benjamin Peirce. It is a stronger 
line of induction than the teleological, but not so readily 
apprehended by uncultivated minds. The peculiar argu- 
ment is that, when a material body conforms in its time 
or space relations to a thought, to a mental law, so that, 
for example, a proposition concerning one point of its 
surface or one instant of its duration shall be true for 
all the points, and for every instant, the presumption is 
that it was created in obedience to that law; and this pre- 
sumption increases with the simplicity and beauty of the 
law, and the complication of the details coming under it. 
So that the presumption rapidly strengthens into moral 
certainty. 

But, in order to feel its full force, we must revert for a 
moment to the nature of time, space, and force. By force, 
I mean the activity of that power which imparts or resists 
motion. It lies dormant in certain points of space which 


EL ee a re 


FINAL CAUSES 55 


we call the centres of atoms. What the atoms are we 
cannot tell, otherwise than that they are points in space 
from which, locally, the manifestations of force proceed, 
as I have once before said. The idealist must admit so 
much as this, and the materialist cannot justly claim to 
know more. 

But we see by the inward eye space so clearly, so per- 
fectly, and, as it were, on every side, that we know the 
power which is manifested in force does not inhere in or 
flow from the point as its efficient cause. The cause may 
be in the place, but the place is not the cause. In like 
manner we see time so clearly and distinctly that we 
know that the instant of time is not itself the efficient 
cause of the force revealed at its arrival. 

The force in an atom—that is, in a centre of action—re- 
veals itself in the phenomena of motion and of the resist- 
ance to motion. These phenomena arrange themselves 
readily under two groups. The one group betrays polar- 
ity of a more or less pronounced and of a more or less 
complicated character. That is to say, it shows that the 
forces in the atomic centre act with varying strength in 
various directions, making fixed angles with each other. 
Such are the phenomena of chemical quantivalence and of 
electric and magnetic disturbance, and the phenomena of 
crystallization. To this group also we may annex those 
properties of matter which show a constancy and individ- 
uality in the strength of the forces in a given atom; for 
example, the laws of definite proportions, in all the various 
forms in which such laws pervade chemistry. 

The other group consists of those manifestations of 
force which seem to act equally in all directions from the 
centre, like the forces of electrical repulsion and attrac- 


56 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tion, or like the force of gravity. Whatever is purely 
physical and reducible to the effects of mechanical force 
can be explained by referring it to one or both of these 
modes of the manifestation of force. 

The first law of motion as determined by physical ex- 
periment is that a body in motion continues in motion 
with uniform velocity in a straight line forever, unless 
subjected to accelerating forces. These accelerating 
forces act, as we have just shown, in one of two modes, 
either by polarity on definitely arranged axes or in de- 
flection around a centre. By the latter mode we obtain 
the revolution and rotation of planets, the oscillations of 
the pendulum, and similar phenomena; while by the first 
mode we obtain chemical changes, the aggregation of 
crystals, and so on. By either mode the result tends 
either toward a dynamic equilibrium, as in the planetary 
motion, or a statical equilibrium, as in crystals. 

In the passage toward a form of permanent equilibrium, 
atoms and masses are frequently passing into positions of 
unstable equilibrium, where, like the ass between two 
bundles of hay, they are equally drawn in various direc- 
tions. For example, take a body of simple linear polarity, 
like a dipping needle, and place it with its poles exactly 
reversed. It has, so to speak, the choice of innumerable 
directions in which it can turn to reverse its poles again 
to their normal position ; and, without figurative language, 
if the poles are exactly reversed, it requires only an infin- 
itesimal force to decide the path in which it shall rotate 
back to its right direction. But what decides the direc- 
tion of this infinitesimal impulse, which sets in motion 
what may prove to be a chain of interlinked reactions of 
great magnitude? If we say that sometimes one thing, 


FINAL CAUSES 57 


sometimes another, produces the initial impulses, then we 
obtain results as disconnected as the causes of the infin- 
itesimal movements. But, if we admit that the causes of 
the beginnings of the motion are interconnected, then the 
results will be interconnected ; and the nature of the con- 
nection of the effects will show the nature of the inter- 
connection of the causes. When the effect is manifested 
in a resultant material form or in a resultant measurable 
motion, the crystalline or the amorphous form, or the 
rhythmic movement, may show that the guidance was 
simply the atomic forces themselves in their combined 
action. When a force is manifested in motion or in 
pressure, the direction of the motion can be guided only 
by force. But, when the atom is passing through a posi- 
tion of unstable equilibrium, it can be guided, as I have 
just shown, by an infinitesimal force; and, if the position is 
absolutely unstable, the guiding force may be absolutely 
infinitesimal,—that is, may be zero. There is, then, in the 
very constitution of an atom-built world, an opportunity 
for the exercise of a spiritual guidance of force. 

This spiritual guidance is of various kinds; but, if we 
keep ourselves near the philosophical foundation of con- 
sciousness as possible, we shall look first at voluntary 
motion. To return to one of the illustrations, I deter- 
mine to write the word “will.’ Immediately upon my vo- 
lition the point of my pen traces the word “will” upon 
the paper. Here is a voluntary guidance of my fingers 
and of the pen held in them, to the effecting of this result 
by mechanical motion. My will has certainly no finite or 
appreciable physical force in itself. Its action upon my 
fingers and the pen is wholly inexplicable by either spirit- 
ual or materialistic philosopher. It is, as I have already 


58 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


shown in the second lecture, magic. No explanation of it 
can be given. The physiologist shows us the nerves re- 
porting the sensation from the fingers’ ends to the brain, 
and the nerves carrying the command back from the 
brain to the muscles, in obedience to which they alter- 
nately contract and relax in such a manner as to make 
the pencil write “will.” But the physiologist can show 
no connection between the cells of nervous matter in the 
brain and the form of the sensation reported or the form 
of the command given. All that we know is that the 
nervous matter, the muscular tissue, and the blood glob- 
ules are bodies in a state of unstable chemical equilib- 
rium, so that they tumble down at an infinitesimal touch 
into the lower forms of urea, carbonic dioxide, etc., and 
that the conscious will directs, by magic, the paths in 
which they turn in their fall, and thus determines the re- 
sultant motion of the pen. I say by magic, for the con- 
scious self is not conscious or cognizant of any of these 
intermediate steps and agencies which he between its vo- 
lition and the final result. 

Here, then, is a vera causa, not in the physical nexus; 
for there there is no cause needed, the absolutely infini- 
tesimal being zero, and it only requiring an absolutely infi- 
nitesimal force to direct the stream at its beginning. But 
here is a vera causa as a logical cause for the guidance of 
forces. And it is the only vera causa known to us which 
does guide and direct the action of forces. The forces of 
nature are thus partially under our control. The ego, 
being absolutely dissevered by the widest conceivable or 
rather inconceivable gulf from matter, from the force 
which produces motion, is enabled, by this magic of con- 
trol over the unstable equilibriums in the body, to guide 


ee 


———— 


FINAL CAUSES 59 


not only the forces of cerebral and nervous and muscular 
contraction in our own body, but thus the external terres- 
trial forces of sun and wind and wave and electric current 
and chemical reaction to our own purposes. But there is 
also guidance where we are not conscious of guiding, 
Take this very instance of simple muscular movement. 
The child wills to grasp his rattle and shake it, and very 
soon learns to do what he desires. His will guides his 
muscular force to the seizing and shaking of the toy. But 
the will and the final result is all that enter his conscious 
thought. His will is the real cause which determines the 
result of shaking the rattle. But where lies the cause of 
the guidance of the intermediate series of relaxations and 
contractions? This was not guided consciously by his 
will. I guide by my volition the movement of my finger 
ends by which I write the word, but I do not guide by con- 
scious volition the nervous and muscular movements of 
the arm. Iam not even conscious of their existence. Yet 
there was guidance there, otherwise the arm would have 
moved aimlessly as an infant’s. And that guidance was 
put ultimately under control of my conscious volition, 
else the words written would not be what I desired. The 
only vera causa known to us in the guidance of the force 
is, as I have just shown, a conscious will, a guiding intel- 
lect. Surely, the law of parsimony would lead me to 
attribute the whole guidance to intellect, and thus regard 
my body as a machine made with wonderful skill and put 
under my partial control. : 
When we step back of the conscious will, we observe 
that the will is prompted by desire and guided by reason. 
In other words, we are reasonable beings, not acting 
capriciously and without motive. There is a basis in 


60 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


our own nature for the division of the inductive argu- 
ment for the wisdom of God into the teleological and 
the morphological lines. 

In Paley’s well-known treatise, and in the major part 
of the eighth Bridgewater treatise the arguments are 
from the apparent design of fitting a means to an end 
or making a tool for a purpose. Thus Socrates argues 
that the protection of the eye from sweat by the brow 
and from dust by the lid, and the perfect adaptation of 
the position of the eye in the head, and its internal 
organization to the purpose of seeing, proves that it 
was made skilfully as an instrument for sight. It is 
the modern fashion to despise this argument, and there 
were in the days of Socrates those who despised it. One 
popular writer of our day calls it the carpenter theory 
of creation, and another speaks of it as a miserable watch- 
tick business. It is by others supposed that the doctrine 
of evolution would, if established, thoroughly dispose of 
it. All these objections and criticisms are founded upon 
a misconception of the real nature of the argument. 
When Goethe asks contemptuously, — 


“Was war’ ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse!”’ 


he is building a man of straw to fight with. No Chris- 
tian theist supposes God to be outside his world, man- 
ipulating it from without. No Christian philosopher ever 
supposed that God “manufactured ” the world, or “ built” 
it, or “made” it, or “shaped” it in any such exterior 
sense. The theology of both the Jewish and Christian 
theologians has always been consonant with that of 
Saint Paul, who says of the Divine Being that zz Him 


FINAL CAUSES 61 


we live and move and have our being, and who quotes 
with approval from Cleanthes and Aratus the words, 
Tod yap kal yévos éopev, “ For we also are his offspring.” 

In other words, Christian theology, and Jewish also, 
have been as pantheistic as reverent reason and devout 
common sense would permit them to be; and those who 
ridicule the argument from design on the ground that 
it makes the Deity a carpenter, a manufacturer standing 
outside his work, either fail utterly to apprehend the 
argument or else they carry their pantheism beyond 
the limits of reverent reason and devout common sense. 

The objection drawn from the doctrine of evolution 
is equally futile. Organic development is simply a mode 
of carrying out a plan: it does not alter the nature of 
the plan. If it were possible to prove (what I deem the 
extravagantly improbable, if not impossible, theory) that 
the human eye was gradually developed by a process 
occupying a million ages, from the diffused sensitiveness 
to light found in the zodphytes, it would not affect the 
strength of Socrates’s argument from the eye, unless 
you could also prove that this gradual development was 
a necessary result of mechanical force acting upon for- 
tuitously scattered atoms of matter. The organic growth 
of the eye in the individual from the embryonic cell to 
a perfect manhood is just. as inconsistent, and just as 
consistent, with the argument for design from the struct- 
ure of the eye as would be an organic growth from spe- 
cies to species in an ascending series through the eons. 

We may therefore dismiss the question of the evolution 
theory from the consideration of the arguments. And I 
think we may also dismiss the objection impled in the 
contemptuous epithets of watch-tick and carpenter theory. 


62 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


The argument from design does not imply a God who 
stands outside the world. What it does imply is that 
the Divine Agency is not an unconscious necessity, aris- 
ing from mechanical force operating within the Divine 
Being to bring out the forms of the universe without 
His knowledge or approval; but it is the action of in- 
finite power, under the guidance of unerring wisdom, freely 
doing what is best because it is best. The canon of 
induction from teleological considerations simply declares 
that the eye is effective as an organ of vision; that the 
complication of parts of the organization conducing to 
this is very great; that the value of the result is im- 
measurable ; that we see no other use for the organ than 
vision, and that we can imagine no improvement or better 
means of effecting the result; and that, therefore, the 
presumption that the eye was made for seeing amounts 
to a moral certainty. There is no presumption here, and 
no implication, that the eye was made in any other mode 
than by organic growth. The evolutionist has no more 
reason to apply the contemptuous epithet, “carpenter 
theory” than one not believing in evolution would have 
for retorting, “Topsy theory.” 

But there are other and equally strong arguments by 
which to show the presence of thought in the guidance of 
force. As the human will acts not only in devising means 
to ends, but also freely uses material forms as symbols or 
as expressions of its own state of thought and feeling, it 
learns to see in the forms of the exterior world a symbolic 
meaning or a direct expression. A work of art is not a 
means to an end, but it is the expression of a thought or 
a feeling. Thought may be expressed in material forms 
without symbolism, and without any other feeling than 


(ee 


— ee 


a 


=—~*ou 


FINAL CAUSES 63 


the desire to express the thought. Thus the diagrams of 
the geometer are the direct expression of his mathemat- 
ical ideas, in which he may take no other interest than an 
intellectual interest in their truth. The designs of orna- 
mental architecture, on the other hand, express not only 
the thought of the architect, but his taste, which is a 
slight degree of artistic feeling. Very little more can be 
said of the simplest forms of sculpture and of drawing. 
But, when we pass to the higher forms of either of these 
arts, or add coloring from the painter’s pencil, we have 
the expression of feeling, or sentiment, predominating 
over the expression of thought. 

The universe is far more than a mere series of adapta- 
tions‘of means to ends, unless we exalt the word “ends” 
to include the expression of thought and feeling. The 
universe is a work of art. It is a combination of philo- 
sophical ideas expressed in their clearest forms; it is the 
manifestation of an all-embracing divine love; it is a poem, 
the utterance of all truth and beauty and goodness. And 
those who object that this language, like the teleological, 
makes the creation something outside of and separate 
from the Creator, put into it a meaning which is not 
necessarily there, and which is certainly not intended by 
those who use these figures. 

When I see a geometrical diagram upon a blackboard, 
I know that the particles of the crayon and the surface 
of the board have had no power to guide the movement 
of the crayon to the formation of the figure. I know also 
that the figure does not exactly and rigorously fulfil geo- 
metrical law. The chalk line has an appreciable width. 
It is not a mathematical line without breadth. And the 
centre of this chalk line does not rigorously fulfil the con- 


64 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ditions of any geometrical locus. Nevertheless, the ap- 
proximate fulfilment of those conditions by the white 
mark upon the board gives me an absolute certainty — 
that is, if the figure be moderately complicated —that the 
geometrical conditions were known, explicitly or implic- 
itly, to the mind which directed the drawing of the dia- 
gram. This conclusion would not be affected by any 
speculations or any discoveries concerning the actual 
mode in which the diagram was drawn. A circle may be 
drawn in a great variety of ways, each based upon a dif- 
ferent mode of looking at its geometrical nature. The 
mechanical draughtsman may draw it with a pair of com- 
passes, basing his method upon the intellectual concep- 
tion of the equality of the radii. A blacksmith makes it 
by passing his tire between three rollers, basing his ac- 
tion upon the intellectual perception of the uniformity of 
its curvature. The artist drawing with free hand may not 
distinctly have either of these ideas in his mind; but his 
feeling of the perfect symmetry of the figure bases itself 
upon some sort of intellectual conception. In whatever 
manner, therefore, a diagram be drawn, let us say of the 
hyperbola and its asymptotes, we find in it invincible 
proof of the presence of an intellect guiding in some 
manner, through a longer or shorter series of instrumen- 
talities, the movements of the crayon. 

Now there is no valid reason why the same induction 
should not be made from the forms of nature. The whole 
creation is a wonderful collection of geometrical diagrams, 
from which the geometer and the physicist have de- 
veloped all the mathematical sciences. The thoughts 
of Newton’s “Principia” and Laplace’s “ Mécanique Cé- 
leste,” and Peirce’s ‘Analytical Mechanics,” and Hamil- 


FINAL CAUSES 65 


ton’s “‘ Quaternions,” were all suggested by the forms of 
nature in which the elements of them were found em- 
bodied. In this assertion it is of course not intended to 
say that the creative Mind takes the same view of space 
and time relations as is taken by the mathematician, nor 
that the Infinite Spirit which created the universe is 
obliged to go through the same processes of induction and 
deduction by which we arrive at an idea and at its mode 
of expression. 

To charge Christian theism with imposing such limita- 
tions upon the divine thought is to attribute to it a con- 
fusion which is not in it, but in the mind of its critic. 
What the Christian theist does say is that the atoms of 
matter are in millions of examples so arranged as to ex- 
press with the closest degree of approximation our own 
a priort conceptions of space and time. In numerous in- 
stances the forms of nature have suggested to the mathe- 
matician laws of space and of time, extending far beyond 
the examples which suggested them. A development of 
these laws by a@ priovt reasoning, entirely independent 
of the generalizations of experience, has led to the predic- 
tion and the discovery of new phenomena in nature; and 
these predictions have been, sometimes after the lapse 
of centuries, fulfilled by observation, as in the familiar 
instance of the ellipse, studied by geometers as an a priorz 
form four centuries before Christ, and never discovered 
as actually occurring in nature until the sixteenth century 
after Christ. Another striking instance is less familiar. 
Division in extreme and mean ratio was invented asa 
purely a priori process in the third century before Christ, 
and was not known to play any part in the economy of 
the external universe until 1849, the middle of the nine- 


66 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


teenth century of our era. These are pure examples of 
the morphological argument. An idea is attained by a 
process of internal vision, and examination of the process 
suggested always by the hints given first by the external 
world, but the idea not involved explicitly, or even im- 
plicitly,in the hints. An idea is thus attained which may 
be thus justly called a przorz, since it is not taken from 
external observation; and the forms of the outward world 
have not suggested it, but only suggested the path by 
which we attain the spiritual intellectual idea. This idea 
is developed frequently with great fulness and minuteness 
of detail, and is a commonplace possession of all cultivated 
minds for years and even for ages before it is discovered 
that the idea is nevertheless embodied perfectly in external 
nature. I say perfectly, but of course this is hyperboli- 
cal language. It is not possible apparently for material 
objects, whether natural or fashioned by human art, to 
conform perfectly to a geometrical or algebraical ideal. 
Even our methods of measurement detect variations 
from perfect geometric figures and from perfect alge- 
braical rhythm; and our methods of measurement fall far 
short of being able to detect infinitesimal error or to es- 
tablish perfection. But, in judging of that which is made 
by human art, we arrive at absolute certainty concerning 
the idea of the artist or artisan without requiring more 
than a rude approximation to a fulfilment of the ideal. 
Why, then, should we not have the same certainty in re- 
gard to the works of nature, in regard to the diagrams of 
creation? It is not necessary to suppose —and I think 
no intelligent theist supposes — that the conception of an 
ellipse, or that the conception of extreme and mean ratio, 
or that any one of the innumerable mathematical concep- 


FINAL CAUSES 67 


tions of which the world offers us natural illustrations, 
lies in the divine mind in the form in which it lies in 
the human mind. We do not pretend to pattern God’s 
thoughts; but we do affirm that the simplest explanation 
of the presence in all parts of nature of these expres- 
sive and approximately exact illustrations of our human 
thought is to say that the origin of the universe is in a 
Universal Reason, an Intelligence whose thoughts compre- 
hend and include all our thoughts. 

Ii the heavens declare, as Comte says, the glory of 
Hipparchus and Kepler and Newton and Laplace, then 
a fortiort they declare, as the Hebrew Psalmist has said, 
the glory of God. If Hipparchus and his noble successors 
win immortal honors by deciphering and unveiling the 
hidden laws of planetary motion, what adoring wonder is 
due to the Intelligence and Power which guides the planets 
on their courses! If Maraldi and McLaurin made them- 
selves a name by showing that the bee’s cell is built on the 
highest mathematical laws, is there no honor to be as- 
cribed to the Creator and Inspirer of the bee? Agassiz, 
and Cuvier, and Linné deserve the high honor they have 
received for unfolding partially the plan of the organic 
kingdoms; and is there no profound wisdom and skill in 
the formation of those kingdoms upon such a plan? The 
sculptor tells in marble a thrilling tale which stirs the 
heart ; but the highest praise of his work is that it is true 
to nature. Is not nature’s work as expressive as sculptor’s, 
and the Creator of the human frame the highest sculptor ? 

Was there no meaning, Emerson asks, in the live repose 
of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shak- 
spere could not re-form for me in words? The painter re- 
forms that meaning in a landscape, and expresses his own 


68 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


feeling thereby. The meaning is a breathing of peace 
from the beautiful repose: it is a benediction, it is an out- 
flow of divine love. 

The musical composer lifts us up or casts us down. He 
expresses every emotion of the heart, and carries us by 
the contagion of sympathy into the region of his own feel- 
ing. What higher evidence of genius and of spiritual 
power can be given than by a composer, for example, like 
Bach, the Shakspere of musicians, who chases away care, 
and fills the heart with quiet cheerfulness by a merry 
gavotte or jig; casts it down with sorrow, and wrings it 
with remorse, by a portrayal of the sufferings in Geth- 
semane; and again rouses you to heroic endeavor and 
religious enthusiasm bya grand toccata summoning the 
hosts of the Church militant to the last grand battle of 
Armageddon ! 

But what could Bach do for us, were not the human ear 
built in wonderful accord with the tones of nature, and 
trained from infancy to recognize the expressiveness of 
natural sounds, the mother’s lullaby, or words of endear- 
ment and words of reproof, the laughter and the sobbing 
of playmates, the song of birds, and the cries of animals in 
distress, the wailing of the winds, and the bass of the 
awful thunder ? 

The moment that the unprejudiced mind recognizes in 
the forms of outward nature the evidences of intellect, it 
rushes not unreasonably, but by sure and safe roads, to the 
conclusion that the Intellect which framed the universe is 
unerring in wisdom, and that its wisdom is prompted to 
action by inexhaustible goodness. 

Of course, this language is inadequate ; for all finite sym- 
bols must be inadequate to set forth infinite realities. 


FINAL CAUSES 69 


The Infinite Intellect does not, like the finite, require time 
for inter-election, but separates truth from falsehood, good 
from evil, by an eternal action of which we can form no 
image. Nevertheless, it thus separates, inter-elects, knows. 
The Infinite Being is not prompted to action by impulses, 
as we are: there is no pro-motion, or pushing him forward. 
Nevertheless, his acts are all reasonable in the highest 
moral and religious as well as intellectual sense. They are 
consonant, in the largest view of human nature and human 
destiny, with our highest conceptions of holiness and love. 
They can be criticised by John Stuart Mill, or by others, 
only on the previous assumption that the highest truths of 
consciousness are falsehood, and that man is like the 
beasts that perish, his highest end being the happiness 
of this earthly life. 

The rapid induction by which the unprejudiced mind 
arrives at the being of one God, infinite in all his perfec- 
tions, is not illusory ; and we are endeavoring in this course 
of lectures to illustrate and vindicate some of the postu- 
lates on which that induction proceeds. The induction is 
so strong and drawn from such numerous sources that it 
would be impossible in so brief a course to examine all its 
parts in detail. 


V. 
THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART. 


We have spoken, in a previous lecture, of the two dis- 
tinct lines into which the argument from design may be 
divided. The teleological takes instances in which a 
means is adapted to an end, and argues that the end was 
the object for which the means was created. This argu- 
ment has been reproached with making the Creator stand 
outside the universe, to plan, deliberate, and contrive how 
to evade or surmount difficulties. But this is a complete 
misunderstanding: there is nothing in the argument in- 
consistent with the view that he saw from eternity the 
whole plan and development of the universe, down to its 
minutest details. The morphological argument, on the 
other hand, takes forms or rhythms in the external world, 
which do not appear to be acting as means to an end, but 
which conform to laws of thought. In these cases the 
position of innumerable points, at innumerable instants, 
can all be expressed by one proposition, declaring the 
position of one point at one instant. Inasmuch as space 
and time are impotent, utterly destitute of power or force ; 
inasmuch as conscious will is the only thing actually 
known to us as guiding force through positions of un- 
stable equilibrium,—it is reasonable to infer that this 
arrangement of points into symmetrical form or rhythmi- 
cal movement is the work of a guiding intellect. 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 71 


The objection that this would make the thoughts of the 
Infinite Being like our thoughts is not sound. We do 
not find that different artists have the same ideas of the 
same form, and it is readily shown that the conception 
of an indefinitely increasing knowledge does not imply 
that the lower amount of knowledge is false. The dullest 
school-boy, in his perception of the human eure hasea 
correct conception of it, so far as it goes. He expresses 
the idea of a human body as unmistakably by stiff chalk 
lines as Raphael by his marvellous multitude and va- 
riety of living, graceful attitudes. Raphael’s facility 
shows that his conception of the living body was incom- 
parably more complete and accurate than the school- 
boy’s; but his conception, nevertheless, includes the 
school-boy’s notion of a head, a trunk, and four limbs. 
Even infinite knowledge of geometrical form would not 
render false our human knowledge, but would include it. 
As the school-boy’s rude sketch indicates that in his 
mind there is some faint likeness to that of Raphael, so 
our human conceptions of geometrical law, being found 
expressed in nature, indicate that in our finite minds lies 
some faint likeness to the Eternal Mind. Of course, we 
must concede that this likeness does not extend to the 
method of embodying the conception; nor does any intel- 
ligent theist suppose that it does. 

Let us now take a rapid glance at the immensity of the 
field which is covered by these two branches of inductive 
proof. Every one is aware how much additional strength 
is given to an inductive conclusion by a multiplication of 
instances from which it is drawn, and how much greater 
the additional strength given by the consilience of differ- 
ent lines of induction toward one conclusion, An induc- 


72 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tion is thus frequently made just as practically certain as 
a deduction, or even as an intuition. For example, the 
existence of fellow-men, similar in their principal physical 
and psychical endowments to ourselves, is only an induc- 
tion; yet it is a conclusion of which every sane mind is 
absolutely certain,—as certain as it can be of its own 
existence. Herbert Spencer says that there is the same 
certainty of the existence of an ultimate cause of the uni- 
verse. The existence of such a cause is, he tells us, 
forced upon our attention and upon our belief by every 
experience in every day’s life. It is this consilience of 
innumerable lines of induction which leads us to leap to 
certainty. 

We may go further. Spencer used to stop short with 
the existence of such a cause; he declared it to be 
absolutely unknown and unknowable; he forbade us 
to make any affirmation concerning it or to ascribe any 
attribute to it. But he could justify himself in issuing 
this prohibition only by a fallacious argument from the 
infinite nature of the ultimate source of all things. Argu- 
ments from the infinite are almost always fallacious. 
Every cause may be known from its effects. The uni- 
verse is intelligible, fulfilling plans of the highest wisdom 
and highest beneficence: its courses fight against the 
wrong-doer and for the upright; and the Cause of the 
universe is thus avouched to us as possessing the high- 
est knowledge, wisdom, goodness, holiness. To these 
conclusions the inductions, also, from every hour's expe- 
rience conspire in leading; and this consilience gives to 
these conclusions a certainty as great as that which we 
have of the existence of our fellow-men. 

The mode in which the results of induction become 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 73 


certainty may be illustrated by the doctrine of mathemati- 
cal probability. Let us suppose that one of a pair of 
dice has been carefully measured and found to be a perfect 
cube; that it is then thrown repeatedly upon a table, and 
a record kept of the sides which come up. Let us further 
Suppose that the ace constantly appears at every fourth 
or fifth throw instead of at every sixth. At first, we may 
Suppose that this was an accidental variation; but, if it 
continue constantly to appear too frequently, we shall 
begin to suspect that the opposite side of the die is the 
heavier. Let us now suppose that an examination shows 
that opposite side to be discolored. From this, we should 
not directly infer that that opposite side is the heavier, 
although we might infer that it was of a different specific 
gravity. Let us now try a third line, by throwing the die 
repeatedly into water. If now the ace comes up every 
third or fourth throw, it will be scarcely possible for us to 
resist the conclusion that the side of the six pips is too 
heavy. Yet, strictly speaking, all the evidence has been 
only an evidence of probability. The chance that the ace 
turns up at any throw is one in six, and the chance that 
it turns up one-sixth of the time becomes greater and 
greater as the number of throws is increased. Yet in order 
to have it certain, even with a perfect die, that the ace 
shall appear one-sixth of the time, we must have an infinite 
number of throws. A divergence from this sufficiently 
great would, however, very soon give moral certainty, 
even if not confirmed by the discoloration on the opposite 
side, and by throwing the die into the denser medium of 
water, thus allowing more time for the heavy side to act. 
Since the tendency toward a greater ratio than one-sixth 
does not show a change in any one direction, as the num- 


74 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ber of throws is indefinitely increased, we infer that the 
ratio would remain more than one-sixth, even were the 
throws multiplied to infinity. We are, therefore, justly 
certain that there is some one cause, constantly acting, to 
bring up the ace. 

When two arguments from induction conspire to give 
probability to one conclusion, that probability increases 
at least as fast as the product of the separate probabilities. 
We say, at least as fast, because, while the doctrine of 
chances gives it that ratio, the moral probability of the 
conclusion is usually increased by vague and undefined 
presumptions, not to be measured numerically, and yet to 
be allowed their just influence in a moral judgment, pre- 
cisely as the discoloration of the die has justly an influence 
in the argument, although that influence is incapable of 
any exact numerical measurement. These presumptions 
may, in some cases, amount to a great deal, leading the 
mind irresistibly to exalt the probability to certainty ; 
while, in other cases, they may amount to very little. 
But it is always in the power of a sufficient number of in- 
ductions to make the mind rush to the conclusion that the 
number might be indefinitely increased, and thus give cer- 
tainty to the probability. This is the manner in which 
the laws of physics have been established ; and the con- 
sent and consilience of induction is the foundation rock 
upon which the magnificent temple of modern science 
stands. There is not a single one of her laws, unless we 
except some elementary laws of mechanics, which rests 
upon any other basis than inductions of probability. Yet 
there are numerous laws of physics of which we are just 
as certain as we are of the simplest axioms of geometry. 
In arriving at the laws of natural science, the students 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 75 


have always been accustomed to leap fearlessly from the 
indefinitely great to the infinite. 

Those who oppose the conclusions of theism concede 
that the great majority of intelligent men agree with Soc- 
rates and with the Stoics, in seeing the marks of intelli- 
gence and wisdom legibly inscribed upon the creation. 
They admit that every form of Atheism, Agnosticism, 
and Pantheism, whether materialistic or spiritual, has to 
contend against what the great mass of men consider 
their common sense. The common sense of mankind 
asks with Napoleon, ‘Who made these things?” Nor 
is the common sense of mankind satisfied with the 
answer,— that they were not made at all, but grew. That 
reply, whether from the ancient philosophy or from the 
new, appears to common sense to be a mere quibble upon 
the word ‘‘made,” as though the word ‘‘make” implied 
the mode of making. No such quibble can blot out of 
sight the evident fact that the parts of the universe are 
exquisitely adapted to each other, in innumerable rela- 
tions of means to ends, precisely as if by infinite wisdom. 
It cannot hide the evident fact that the whole universe 
moves by law, precisely as if in the fulfilment of a Divine 
ideal. It cannot satisfy the longings of the heart for an 
infinite love whereon to rest. Nor can it still the voice 
of conscience; reproving our sins, and giving us dread 
intimations of the universality of the moral law and of its 
eternal sanctions. Theism is the natural conclusion, not 
only of the intellect of man, but of his heart also. Au- 
guste Comte, the great founder of the school of Positive 
Philosophy, gives us a singular testimony to this fact in 
that broad generalization with which he opens his pon- 
derous “Cours de Philosophie Positif.” He says that the 


76 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


human race and the individual man always pass, first of 
all, through a theological stage, in which we attribute the 
existence and order of the world to a Divine creation. 
A true, unprejudiced, reasonable examination of this 
first conclusion of the human mind upon beholding the 
regularity, intelligibility, and beauty of external nature, 
will confirm and strengthen it: it will not, as Comte im- 
agines, dissipate it. In Cooke’s admirable volume, “ Relig- 
ion and Chemistry,” he shows that the ultimate constitu- 
tion of matter, so far as modern physics have succeeded 
in unveiling it, bears abundant testimony that an All-Wise 
Intellect presided at its creation. Critics of various 
schools quibble upon the word “creation,” as they do 
upon the word “make”; but their pleasantries are di- 
rected against their own caricatures of theistic thought, 
and not against the thought itself. No intelligent Chris- 
tian supposes that any finite or human language can be 
adequate to express infinite realities. By saying that in- 
tellect presided at the creation of matter, he means that 


“Out of Thought’s interior sphere 
These wonders rose to upper air.” 


‘“‘ Ever fresh the broad creation, 
A divine improvisation, 
From the heart of God proceeds, 
A single will, a million deeds.” 


Thought preceded, logically, if not chronologically, the 
formation of the elements. It is objected that creation 
never could have taken place in time, because that would 
imply a time before creation, when God dwelt alone; and 
creation would thus become an accident, a change in the 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART Tih 


Divine life; but the infinite and eternal cannot suffer 
change. And the reply of Christian theism is obvious: 
first, that we cannot argue safely from the infinite; and, 
secondly, that in this objection the infinite is not made 
absolutely infinite. Of course, the potentiality of all 
being lay in him; and nothing could come into existence 
which was not already in the abyss of potentiality with 
him, any more than lava could flow from a volcano were it 
not already in the caverns beneath. But this objection to 
creation, that it would make a change in the Divine life, 
forgets that changes are actually and incessantly occur- 
ring in the world. The eruption of volcanoes, for exam- 
ple, certainly takes place in time and in space. But the 
eruption of a universe out of potentiality into existence is, 
in respect to the infinite, no greater than an eruption of 
Vesuvius out of quiescence into action. 

In the very elements of matter; in the law of definite 
proportions by weight ; in the law of multiple volumes; in 
the peculiar quiescence of some of the most abundant 
materials ; in the alternation of perfect quietude and in- 
controllable fury, displayed by oxygen; in the value of 
both moods to human life; in the instability of nitrogen, 
and its consequent adaptation to form organisms, of un- 
stable equilibrium, as a residence for our incarnate spirits ; 
in the prevalence of polarities, producing definite crystal- 
line forms, marvellously exact in their conformity to geo- 
metrical law,— in these, and in various other peculiarities 
of inorganic matter, Professor Cooke shows that numerous 
lines of induction run together, and confirm beyond rea- 
sonable cavil the conclusion that, in the very constitution 
of matter itself, we have abundantly demonstrative evi- 
dence that it is the work of a far-seeing, wide-reaching 


78 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Intelligence, immeasurably exceeding and yet including 
our wisest conceptions of geometric and physical fit- 
ness. 

Let us pause for a moment to consider a single one of 
these numerous evidences, the offices of water. At the 
average temperature of the surface of the globe, water is 
the most abundant of liquids. It enters largely into the 
composition of the rocks, and is held mechanically in the 
soil. It is more nearly a universal solvent than any other 
known liquid. The substances soluble, for example, in al- 
cohol or ether or in carbonic bisulphide, and not in water, 
are rare and infrequent in comparison with those which 
water will dissolve. It is through this solubility alone 
that sufficient mobility is given to the components of plants 
and animals to allow their psyches to guide the forces of 
the sunbeam in building up organic forms. Water itself 
also largely enters into those forms as a component. 

It is an almost universal law that bodies contract with 
cold, expand with heat. In some instances there is an 
apparent exception, just at the moment of passing from a 
liquid to a solid form. But there are two notable cases in 
which the liquid begins to expand by cooling while yet 
above the temperature at which it solidifies. One of these 
instances is found in bismuth, a comparatively rare metal, 
in which the exception to the law has not led to many 
results of interest. But, in the case of water, the excep- 
tion is well marked. It is found that water, when cooling, 
begins to expand while yet nearly eight degrees Fahren- 
heit above the freezing point. This exception has as yet 
been accounted for by no physical theory of the constitu- 
tion of matter in general or of water in particular. It 
stands out as an unmistakable and important exception to 


THEC UNIVERSE AX WORK OF2ART 79 


what would otherwise have been regarded as an invariable 
law of nature; and this exception naturally leads to ex- 
ceedingly interesting teleological inferences. 

Water covers more than half the surface of the globe, 
and permeates in sensible quantity a large proportion of 
the surface which it does not cover. Besides its great 
function as a solvent of other bodies, thus allowing mobil- 
ity of parts and evolution of organic forms, water is the 
great governor, regulator, or moderator of changes of tem- 
perature. The organic life of the world requires a very 
nice adjustment of the temperature of the surface within 
narrow limits of variation. Two miles below the surface 
the heat is everywhere greater than plant or animal could 
bear. Four miles above the surface the cold is always too 
intense for life to be maintained. Between these exceed- 
ingly narrow limits of space the narrow limits of climate 
are to be maintained, else the earth becomes uninhabit- 
able. This balance of climates or temperatures is main- 
tained through the agency of water. A blast from the 
north sweeps down upon us, and the vapor in the air is 
condensed into rain or snow, giving out its heat into the 
borean air and bringing its temperature up nearer to the 
average. A breeze from the south comes laden with suf- 
focating heat, the snow or moist earth, or the summer 
foliage filled with water, takes away the heat, and pours 
out vapor in return. When a portion of the water in a 
lake has given out its heat to the northern blast, it is con- 
densed by cooling, and sinks to the bottom, sending up 

/ warmer water to supply its place and to temper a new 
a portion of northern air. This process continues until 
the lake is chilled through to its depths, and brought down 

to about thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, where the proc- 


80 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ess stops. The surface water cooled below that point ex- 
pands, and by this exceptional behavior remains on the 
surface, and shields the water below. Presently it freezes, 
makes a solid coating of ice over the whole; and a most 
intense and protracted winter can make that ice only a few 
feet thick. Beneath it lies the great body of the lake, 
still held at about forty degrees, except as the warmer bed 
of earth below may raise the lower portion, and send it 
slowly up to be cooled by contact with the colder strata 
near the ice. 

Now let us consider for a moment what would take 
place did water not thus form an exception to the general 
rule. The whole lake or river would then be chilled to the 
freezing point, and readily be frozen solid. The river 
would thus perpetually gorge and choke itself by bottom 
ice, and all winter be spreading new fields of ice over its 
adjacent intervales. No summer sun would have power 
to thaw out the bottom of the lakes nor of the largest 
rivers. Not only would all organic life within the waters 
become impossible, but the whole earth would be perpet- 
ually glaciated, and even the torrid zone be narrowed into 
a belt of alternate frost and vapor bath, so that terrestrial 
as well as aquatic life would disappear from the earth, 

Common sense can scarcely refuse to see, in this strik- 
ing peculiarity of water, in this one great exception to the 
universal law of shrinking by cold, in this standing — or, 
rather, perpetually flowing and reappearing — miracle, a 
strong evidence of fore-knowledge. The constitution of 
water was preadapted to the races of plants and animals 
which were to be placed upon the terraqueous globe. No 
objection, subtly drawn from the nature of infinity and 
from the impossibility of attributing to the Infinite Being 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART SI 


so personal an attribute as intelligent forethought, can 
prevent common sense from seeing, in this behavior of 
water, a testimony to the wisdom of God. This is, how- 
ever, but a single one of numerous instances brought for- 
ward by Professor Cooke and by others, to show that the 
original constitution of matter is planned in conformity 
with the design of bringing man upon the world. Each 
of these instances forms a strong argument. The com- 
bination of the whole is invincible. 

As Professor Cooke argues from the molecular and even 
from the atomic constitution of matter, so astronomers, 
geologists, and geographers show us that in the cosmical 
arrangements there is similar evidence of a wise adapta- 
tion of part to part. If the present condition of things 
came without forethought or plan, it certainly is such 
a condition as wise forethought would have produced. 
There is evidence, in the formation of the continents and 
in the direction of mountain chains, that the present 
obliquity of the ecliptic has remained substantially the 
same since before the earliest azoic era. Yet that obliq- 
uity is so exactly suited to the present condition of things 
that any considerable diminution of it would make the 
torrid regions uninhabitable from heat and the temperate 
regions uninhabitable from cold. On the other hand, any 
considerable increase of it would carry frost to the equator, 
and make the summers of the temperate zones unendur- 
ably hot. Similar circumstances, as has been shown by 
Guyot and others, would follow any considerable change 
in the form and position of the continents. The size and 
distance of the moon, and her effect upon the tides, and 
many other things of this nature increase still further the 
lines of induction leading to the same great conclusion. 


82 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Most numerous, however, are the lines of induction 
which may be followed in the examination of organic 
forms. The etymology of all languages shows that the 
earliest observers and thinkers were impressed with the 
fact that an animal, and even a plant, may be considered 
as having organs; that is, instruments designed and 
adapted for effecting ends. That impression is still made 
upon every observer. Evolutionists of to-day, holding 
the most agnostic or even atheistic philosophy, express 
the facts of organic nature by using teleological language. 
They speak just as freely as any other writers of the 
object of the various modifications of vegetable and animal 
forms ; that is to say, they use the words, “object, ences 
and “purpose,” as the easiest way of expressing their per- 
ception of the uses and advantages of the modifications, 

The innumerable instances of the adaptation of means 
and ends in nature are most easily thus described. Now, 
we may, if we see sufficient evidence to lead us so to do, 
suppose that all these modifications were produced by the 
mutual relation and reaction and limiting effect of hered- 
ity, of variability, and survival of the fittest. But, if we 
do so, then it seems to me that the facts of nature should 
also lead us to maintain (with Professor Asa Gray and 
some other modern writers, and with Erasmus Darwin, 
the grandfather of Charles Darwin,—a man of great 
genius and learning, whose name is strangely overlooked 
and ignored by those who, through the grandson, have 
received some of his doctrines) that the variation and 
survival are, nevertheless, through pre-established lines, 
since the total result bears the marks of infinite wisdom 
and power,—the evidence of having resulted from the 
ordination of Eternal Wisdom. 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF, ART 83 


Certainly, the whole series of organic forms and func- 
tions, whether taken individually, taken in their smaller 
groups, or taken in their total connection, is precisely of 
the same character as if it were the fulfilment of a plan,— 
a plan of all-comprehensive, unerring wisdom, using the 
resources of infinite skill and power. Spherical astron- 
omy treats, properly, only of the apparent motions of the 
heavenly bodies on the apparent interior surface of an ap- 
parent hemisphere or sky; but, in a certain treatise, the 
writer, after describing various apparent diurnal motions, 
sums them up by adding “precisely as if the earth were 
turning on its axis from west to east.” And this is the 
reason why the Copernican system is believed to be true, 
because it is thus in perfect accord with the appearances 
in the sky. When any hypothesis explains the facts 
which it was framed to explain, and is discovered also to 
explain other facts not known or not considered when 
framing it, the hypothesis rapidly becomes a theory; and 
that theory is, by the increase of the facts which it ex- 
plains, more and more firmly established as science. 

Now, the morphological and teleological arguments of 
theology make the hypothesis that the universe is framed 
and fashioned after an intellectual ideal of perfect wisdom, 
so that the parts are adapted to each other with infinite 
skill, to accomplish the fulfilment of the ideal. It is ad- 
mitted that we cannot grasp that ideal in its entirety. It 
is admitted that we can only partially judge of the adapta- 
tion of means to ends. It is admitted that we can see 
only a part of the ends, and that we may, therefore, some- 
times err in our perception of the uses of parts. But we 
certainly find, in the universe, abundant evidence of the 
presence of thought. The direct road from the high @ 


84 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


prior’ assumptions, which the teleological and morpholog- 
ical arguments make, leads back to many truths of obser- 
vation, not included in those from which the assumptions 
were made. For example, we have been led to assume 
that a God of infinite wisdom and power will not waste 
any force. Whatever he does will be done with the least 
possible expenditure of power. Now, it is a historical fact 
that, out of this purely theological statement, out of this 
reverent theological assumption of Maupertius, mathemat- 
ical writers have drawn as freely as from a horn of plenty. 
From it, as a premise, the mathematician deduces many 
laws of mechanics, which the physicist learns by observa- 
tion. The reader will doubtless recall the familiar in- 
stance of the optical laws, Light, in passing from point 
to point, through a medium of uniform resistance, would 
spend a minimum of force by going in the shortest path,— 
that is, in a straight line. Observation shows that light 
does move in straight lines. If we ask that the light, in 
passing through the uniform medium from one point to 
another, shall, upon its way, be reflected from the surface 
of a mirror, then the point of reflection must be so sit- 
uated as to make the total path of the incident and re- 
flected rays as short as possible. Calculation proves that 
the angles of incidence and of reflection must therefore be 
equal. Observation shows that they are equal. If the 
light goes through two media of different densities, then 
the path in the more difficult medium must be shortened, 
that in the easier lengthened, in such manner that the 
total force expended shall be the least possible. Calcula- 
tion proves that the sines of the angles of incidence and 
refraction must therefore be proportioned to the ease of 
motion in the media. Observation proves that they are 
sO proportioned. 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 85 


Again, look at the arrangement of leaves upon the 
stems of plants. Our theological conceptions would make 
us say that the wisdom, we might almost say the justice, 
of God would make him impress upon the plant a law by 
which the leaves should be evenly scattered around the 
stem, so that every leaf should have the fairest chance at 
light and air. The mathematician shows that this re- 
quires the successive leaves to divide the horizontal circle 
in extreme and mean ratio: the botanists show us this 
is the very law by which the leaves are arranged. This 
division in extreme and mean ratio was invented before 
the Christian era for purely abstract geometrical uses. 
Until the year 1849, no one was aware that it had been 
used in nature; but then it was shown to be embodied, 
not only in the plants, but in the arrangements of the 
solar system. Although the two instances are in such 
different regions of nature,—the one in the leaves of 
terrestrial plants, the other in the revolution of the ce- 
lestial bodies,— and even in such different regions of 
thought, the leaves dividing space in this ratio and the 
planets simply dividing time, yet the algebraical concep- 
tion is the same in both. The use also is similar in both 
cases. The planets are kept scattered like the leaves; 
and a heliacal conjunction of more than two is a rare oc- 
currence, frightening the astrologically timid only at rare 
epochs of time. 

The physical philosopher may justly object to the inju- 
dicious use of a grzorvt methods, such as brought contempt 
upon many of the ancient physical speculations, such as 
will probably, hereafter, bring contempt upon some con- 
temporaneous speculations. But he cannot justly object 
to a legitimate use of the method, as has just been shown 


86 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


by examples of what it can do, when judiciously handled. 
Those examples are striking, but they are not excep- 
tional. The mathematical method has been more easily 
applied, heretofore, to mechanical and cosmical problems ; 
but the same method is gradually extending itself into 
modern chemistry and physiology. All that is purely 
physical even in the human brain may be finally resolved 
into modes of motion, and must therefore, in the prog- 
ress of human knowledge, become more and more amen- 
able to mathematical treatment. In other words, that 
which is purely physical must become more and more 
purely ideal. With every step of that progress, hereto- 
fore, the teleological and morphological arguments have 
become firmer and more multiplied. The enormous num- 
ber of these consenting and consilient lines of ever- 
strengthening induction may be inferred, when we recol- 
lect how many treatises have been written in the mere 
attempt to enumerate them. The fulness of particular 
lines may be illustrated by a reference to the Duke of 
Argyll’s volume upon the wings of birds, or to Agassiz’s 
one hundred and thirty-seven inferences from the classifi- 
cation of the animal kingdom. There is no evading the 
overwhelming number and conclusive forms of these argu- 
ments, no avoidance of the conclusion that “there is one 
God,” and that “science is the knowledge of him.” There 
is no resisting the evidence of his infinite wisdom, his ab- 
solute foreknowledge from the earliest epoch of all that 
has since transpired, There is no resisting this joy-in- 
spiring, uplifting conclusion, except by methods which 
deny the validity of all reasoning, and destroy the possi- 
bility of ever resting in any conclusion or belief whatever. 
Taken as a purely intellectual proposition, the evidence of 


THE UNIVERSE A WORK OF ART 87 


the being of an all-wise and almighty Creator of the uni- 
verse is as conclusive as the evidence of the being of our 
fellow-men, 

The world is not a machine, running independent of 
its Creator’s sustaining power; neither is it an organism 
of which He is the unconscious psyche: it is a perpetual, 
increasingly intelligible revelation of his divine wisdom, 
his unfathomable goodness, his eternal power. Men may 
err in their attempts to interpret it; but Bacon’s compari- 
son of final causes to vestal virgins, and Huxley’s coarser 
allusion to /etazrae, are as false to the history of science 
as they are disagreeable to modern taste. 


VI. 
POWER AND POSSIBILITY. 


THOSE who have ridiculed the arguments of natural 
theology have usually assumed that the teleological and 
morphological arguments were intended as a demonstra- 
tion of the wisdom of God. But, certainly, no theological 
writer of sound discretion has ever so misunderstood his 
own lines of thought. We could not demonstratively 
prove, from an examination of the external world, that the 
Creator is infinitely wise, absolutely unerring. We could 
not do this unless we were ourselves unerring in wisdom, 
unlimited in power, and examined the whole of a bound- 
less universe in every part. As it is, however, we obtain 
indefinitely great confirmations of our faith in the wisdom 
of God. Various lines of induction lead us toward the 
grand conclusions of faith in him; and reason shows that, 
in rising upwards toward a consideration of the source 
and origin of all things, we can find no rest for the in- 
quiring spirit except by faith in an infinite source,—a 
God infinitely and unerringly wise. It is a moral neces- 
sity in our own nature, which leads us thus to push 
through and beyond the indefinitely great,— thus to leap 
to and cling to the infinite. The same conclusion arises 
from a consideration of the Divine Power. The universe, 
in its actual manifestations of force, is indefinitely great. 
These forces imply still greater potentialities. And the 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY 89 


mind will not be satisfied without the conviction that in 
the Being in which these powers abide there is a poten- 
tial abyss of infinite depth and capacity. 

We have already alluded to the rich fruits which math- 
ematical and physical science has gathered from fields 
covered by the principle of the least action—the dogma 
of theism that an infinitely wise God will waste no force. 
As it was from theology that mathematics and physics re- 
ceived this valuable, instructive, fruitful dogma, so it is to 
theology that they are still to look for limiting guides 
that may prevent their wresting it to their own destruc- 
tion, In the present day, when the domain of physical 
force has been so widely extended by brilliant experi- 
ments, and the induction that all manifestations of force, 
in space and time, are merely modes of motion, has been 
so firmly established, carrying with it the consequence 
that all forces are really correlated forms of one force, it 
is sometimes hastily assumed that the doctrine of the 
conservation of the ws vzva has been equally established 
as a universal truth. It is sometimes said that as the 
sum total of matter in the universe is constant, nothing 
being created and nothing being annihilated, so in like 
manner the sum total of force in the universe is constant, 
none being added, none being destroyed. It is said that 
all the forces in the universe are either being manifested 
as energy, or becoming potential as power; and that the 
universe, therefore, has been in motion from eternity, 
and will be in motion to eternity. | 

Yet for this form of the doctrine there is no distinct 
evidence; and it has been stated, by very high authority, 
that it can be shown to be mathematically impossible. 
Wherever we see matter in motion, not under the guid- 


QO POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ance of organic life, it is moving toward a position of 
stable equilibrium, either statical or dynamical. By this 
phrase, ‘‘dynamical stable equilibrium,” we refer to such 
movements as those of the planets of the solar system. 

But a grave suspicion has been entertained that the lu- 
miniferous ether, or, perhaps, some grosser interplanetary 
matter, is slowly retarding the motions of the planets, so 
that these examples of apparently stable dynamic equi- 
librium would fail to give us assurance of an absolute per- 
petuity to the cosmos. The tendency everywhere is to 
move toward a final state of stable statical equilibrium,— 
a state indistinguishable by our imagination from a state 
of annihilation ; for a final, universal, statical equilibrium 
implies an absolute quiescence of all motion, a return of 
all force to the abyss of potentiality, a disappearance of 
every conceivable phenomenon. And this state is threat- 
ened by the universal phenomenon of cooling. The sun, 
for example, radiates his floods of light and heat. They 
may last millions of years, but they are not inexhaustible; 
they may be supplied by showers of meteors and comets 
falling into it, but that supply cannot be infinite: for all 
that physical science can see, the sun must finally be as 
cold and dead as the moon, Even should two dead suns 
fall into each other, the concussion would produce only 
a temporary, partial return of the heat; for all the energy 
that could be converted into new heat would be the 
force which is in the translation of the two cold suns. 
Whereas, at present, the suns have all that energy, and 
their present heat beside. The energy of that heat is 
radiated outward, from the universe as known to us, with 
a constant flow; and science knows no way whatever by 
which it can be restored. If, therefore, physical science 


POWER AND. POSSIBILITY OI 


believes in an eternal, physical universe, she must, in 
order to find any basis for her belief, leave the domain 
of physics and come into that of theology. Science her- 
self can Jead backward only to a wonderful fire-mist, fill- 
ing universal space; forward only to absolute zero, four 
hundred and sixty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit,— pitch 
dark at that. For any origin of that inconceivable en- 
ergy of pristine force, for any recovery from that total 
stagnation of utterly unimaginable cold and darkness 
wherein no physical forces will be manifest, she can turn 
only to the theological conception of God. 

Whether theology demands of us faith in the existence 
of a physical universe from eternity to eternity is, how- 
ever, a difficult problem, upon which there may not be 
an agreement among the deepest thinkers. Certainly, 
the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures seem to imply an 
absolute creation at a definite era of time, and an absolute 
destruction, at some future era, of the present existing 
universe. We have just said that purely physical science 
seems to point to the same conclusion. Yet, in those 
same Scriptures, the realities of the spiritual world are 
always represented in figures drawn from the natural 
world. Philosophy, speculating upon the same question, 
fails to perceive the possibility of any communication be- 
tween mind and mind, except through the medium of 
something perfectly analogous to matter. The authors 
of an ingenious little book, ‘The Unseen Universe,” en- 
deavor to show that there may be ethereal bodies bearing 
the same relation to our present material bodies that 
the luminiferous ether bears to the grosser fluids of the 
atmosphere and the ocean. The fundamental fault in 
their treatise is the apparent assumption that man can- 


Q2 POSTULATES) OF .REVELATION 


not exist without a body; and their argument for immor- 
tality only goes to the extent of saying that it is possible 
that we have an ethereal body which may outlast the 
material body by thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thou- 
sands, of years. This does not, however, satisfy the 
demand of pure reason, which shows that the soul of 
man, which reads and partially understands the lessons 
of external nature, is directly akin to the Eternal and 
Infinite Spirit which writes these lessons. Seventy 
thousand years is no nearer to the true immortality of 
the human soul than seventy. That soul does not de- 
mand a body in order to exist, but simply demands 
control over some form of motion in time and space, by 
which it may express itself to other minds. How nearly 
analogous that control of motion in the spiritual world 
may be to our control of motions in the material world 
is a question which probably can never be answered 
until we have passed beyond the veil. 

All researches into the constitution of the natural world. 
show that there is an intellectual connection of all the 
parts; that there is a unity of thought, even in places 
where we discover no unity of cause, unless we seek that 
unity of cause in the ideal connection existing in the 
thought which nature embodies. Thus there is an intel- 
lectual connection between the force of gravity, the ve- 
locity of light, and the velocity with which the wave on 
the vibrating strings of a harp runs up and down the wire. 
There have been writers in our own day who have admitted 
this manifestation of wisdom and skill in the co-ordinated 
movements of the universe, but who have found them- 
selves unable to admit that any mind, even that of the 
Ruler of the visible universe, could have the control of 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY 93 


unlimited physical energy. Mill thought that, if we 
yielded to the arguments for the being of a wise and 
beneficent God, we must at the same time admit that 
his power was limited. His opinions on theology are 
curious evidences of the impossibility of utterly expelling 
the spiritual nature from a man, even by such an educa- 
tion as that under which his growth was cramped and 
distorted. The evidences, which he thought he detected, 
of limitation to the power of the Almighty, appear to us 
to have no weight. But, on the other hand, reason will 
show that there are limitations to the Almighty Power, 
which unreasonable men frequently overlook. Physical 
necessity, which to the common mind appears to be an 
absolute necessity, is, in fact, the weakest form of neces- 
sity. Logical necessity overrides it; and the highest 
necessity, moral necessity, reaches far above either of 
the other two. We rise by reason to the higher concep- 
tion of infinite power, which can manifest itself in any 
form of existence, in the creation of a soul or of a world. 
To such an Almighty Power there are, of course, no 
limits in the quantitative sense, else the power would 
not be almighty. But there are qualitative limits, which 
we are not to disregard in our speculations concerning 
God’s actions. For example, we cannot conceive that 
power has any control over the relations of space. It 
space be dependent on the infinite, absolute Being for its 
existence, it would seem to be simply this, that the divine 
omnipresence constitutes space. Space, therefore, could 
not be withdrawn into potentiality, even by infinite power. 
Again, neither reason nor imagination can conceive that 
even infinite power could make two straight lines enclose 
a space, or make commensurate the diagonal with the 


94. POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


side of a square, or the diameter with the circumference 
of a circle. In like manner reason presents the existence 
and relations of time, as being independent of power. 
If time be dependent at all upon God, it seems to 
reason that it is dependent on his being, and not upon 
his will. In other words, it may be constituted by his 
eternity, but not by his fiat. Nor can we, in the most 
reverent frame of mind, admit that he could create a real 
period of time, either before or after the present in- 
stant. To such conclusions we are compelled by a 
necessity stronger than that of power; namely, logical 
necessity. 

Now, since space and time are thus independent of 
power, it follows that there must be things in the physical 
universe, also, which are out of the control of power. 
Force and energy are potentially unlimited in the will of 
God, and in actuality may be increased or diminished by 
him. But, inasmuch as physical forces are manifested by 
motion, and motion is manifested through space and time 
relations, physical forces must conform in their manifesta- 
tions to the laws of geometry and algebra, which are inde- 
pendent of power. Thus, of logical necessity, there arise 
physical impossibilities. There must be absolutely con- 
tradictory qualities in matter, as a function of space and 
time, which could not possibly be manifested in the same 
substance at the same time. 

When we enter the realm of spirit, the reason, even in 
its most reverent moods, recognizes the fact that there 
are also contradictories in spiritual things, absolute contra- 
dictories, so that it would not lie within the sphere of 
power to reconcile them. It is true that our sight in this 
realm is not so clear as it is in space and time. It requires 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY 95 


sharper insight and more patient thought to see the high 
realities of the spiritual’ world. We may not, therefore, 
be able to point out spiritual instances of the limitations 
of almighty power so unmistakable as the incommensura- 
bility of surds in mathematics. Yet we may certainly say 
that a being cannot be properly conscious and unconscious 
of the same thing at the same moment; that it cannot 
hate and love the same thing at the same instant; that it 
cannot be morally free, and yet controlled in choice by 
physical necessity. In our theological speculations, there- 
fore, concerning the attributes of the Infinite Being, we 
are not hastily to assume that, because the Infinite One 
is almighty, he can do what is impossible. ‘With God 
all things are possible,” is a truth which has its own limi- 
tations. It is not possible for him to err, to be ignorant, 
or to be unjust. It is not possible for his power to effect 
what lies out of the sphere of power. 

And He alone knows, in all cases, what is within the 
sphere of power. He alone knows, also, what things 
within the range of power are best to be done. The in- 
ductions which show his wisdom confirm the decision of 
the higher reason, which runs beyond the conclusions of 
induction, and declares that the knowledge and wisdom 
of the uncreated First Cause must be infinite. <A great 
deal of labor has been given by religious writers to the 
task of reconciling the goodness of God with the exist- 
ence of so much apparent evil. A great deal might have 
been given to the equally difficult task of reconciling his 
holiness with the existence of so much pleasure in the 
world, tempting men so frequently to sin. If an apology 
is necessary for the existence of pain and evil, an apology 
is equally necessary for the existence of pleasure and of 


96 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


beauty. But, in writing upon these topics, men have 
usually failed to recognize the limitations of human knowl- 
edge. They have failed to acknowledge that man does 
not know the limits of the possible and of the impossible, 
that man does not know what is best nor what would be 
inexpedient. Those who have been bold enough to say 
that the evil in the world is real evil, and that it was 
within the power of God to prevent it, have usually been 
those who deny, or at least overlook, the spiritual and 
immortal interests of man, and who have thought that 
man perishes utterly when the body dies. 

God alone knows what is within the limits of possibil- 
ity, and He alone knows what is best. To me it seems 
evident that he has seen that virtue is the highest good; 
that there cannot be any happiness so high as that of a 
voluntary free co-operation of our spirits with his spirit. 
It is neither within the power of my imagination nor of 
my reason to conceive higher happiness, for a finite, a 
created spirit, than a happiness of a free voluntary sub- 
mission of the will to the will of the infinitely Wise and 
infinitely Good; that is, than the happiness of becoming 
a willing co-worker of God. But this highest happiness 
is impossible without freedom; and freedom, in a finite 
being, involves the certainty of occasional sin; and the re- 
demption from sin can be accomplished only by a co-oper- 
ation of the spirit of God with the human will. The fun- 
damental postulates of reason, confirmed by inductions 
from every part of nature, thus involve the necessity for 
the occurrence of sin; and sin involves the necessity for 
redemption by a higher power than that of nature. The 
will itself cannot be reached ad extra, by influences of the 
natural world. It can be reached, and aided in its infirm- 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY Q7 


ity, only by an influence from that power which originally 
gave it being. This is the nigh prerogative of its free- 
dom. 

Again, inasmuch as the highest happiness is attainable 
only through freedom; and inasmuch as communication 
of spirit with spirit is, so far as we can see, attainable only 
through the guidance of forces producing motion, this ma- 
terial external nature must contain unstable equilibriums 
which our free choice can turn in any direction. Hence 
the body must be of a texture which may allow it to be 
governed by spirit; and this involves a whole scheme of 
organic nature. But what human intellect can decide the 
possibilities and impossibilities involved in such a scheme? 
A recent French writer maintains that the peculiar chem- 
ical nature of nitrogen must, of necessity, produce every 
conceivable form of chemical instability ; and that, among 
these, those fitted to survive must occur. These survi- 
vors are, he says, the actual organic forms of nature. We 
quote this absurd conclusion only to show how universally 
conceded are the facts from which the sounder conclusion 
is drawn, that the plan of the organic kingdoms involved 
the necessity for the chemical peculiarities of nitrogen, 
precisely as the plan of giving to free finite spirits a body, 
in which to receive their primary education, involves the 
necessity for an organic kingdom. 

Now, our limited means of knowledge will not, at pres- 
ent, permit us to deny that, in the best adaptation of the 
clobe to be the habitat of organized beings, there was in- 
volved a necessity for earthquakes, conflagrations, pesti- 
lences, and the like, just asin the plan of giving these 
free spirits liberty, and the education of free-born children, 
there is involved the necessity of allowing them to sin, 


98 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


and sometimes to sin grievously. Much less are we at 
liberty to deny that these physical evils are essential for 
the education of the spirit. We would not rashly limit 
the powers of the Almighty. He is almighty, but he is 
also all-wise and all-holy. It is impossible for him to err 
or to be unjust. It is frequently said that, because he is 
infinite, he cannot do this and he cannot do that. Such 
negations of his power are unreasonable. His infinity 
prevents no action that 1s possible; but his holiness and 
wisdom make error and sin impossible to him. His in- 
finity does not prevent finite and special actions, if such 
actions are wise and holy. On the contrary, infinity is 
not infinite, if it do not include all the finite. Yet 
Strauss, in the introduction of his “Leben Jesu,” says that 
God, being infinite, can act only through all space at once, 
and through all past and coming eternities at once. 
Hence, he argues, no miracle is possible, since a miracle 
would be an action of God ata given time in a given 
place. 

The fallacy of this reasoning is twofold. In the first 
place, even if sound, it is directed only against one par- 
ticular theory of miracles. He therefore greatly errs in 
applying it to disprove the occurrence of miracles them- 
selves. It would just as much disprove the occurrence of 
any and every change, or event of any character, in time 
and space. In the second place, it is fallacious, because 
it argues from infinite premises to finite conclusions. 
The infinite being is not infinite, unless it embraces all 
finitude. God is not infinite in power, unless he can act 
at any point and at each point of space, at any or at each 
instant of time. Strauss, therefore, in his attempt to 
argue from the infinity of God, that he can act only simul- 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY 99 


taneously throughout all space and synchronously through 
all eternity, is really imposing upon the Infinite one of 
the feeble limitations of his own thought. 

We do not say that there was a physical impossibility 
(arising out of the necessary character of space and time 
relations) of avoiding the various forms of suffering and 
death. Neither do we say that there was a spiritual im- 
possibility of giving man the highest education, and lead- 
ing him most surely to virtue and to the most profound 
and abiding joy, without the misery and sin of this world. 
But we do say, and say emphatically, that human knowl- 
edge will not at present enable us to deny either of these 
impossibilities. For aught we know, these are impossibil- 
ities lying in the very nature of things, and seen in the 
absolute and eternal reason of the Creator, before the 
creation of man. We add that we agree with Leibnitz, 
and believe with our whole hearts that the infinite knowl- 
edge of God, seeing from the beginning all possible and all 
impossible forms of creation, chose the very best because 
it was the best ; and we know it was the best because he 
chose it. It has been asserted that Nature is as cruel to 
our race as she could be without destroying it. Yet, if 
we look at the Aryan races, we certainly find that in those 
countries where Nature is most cruel man is the happiest. 
He is not happy without labor; yet he is too lazy to work, 
unless he is compelled. 

It has sometimes been said that, if it was not in the 
power of Omnipotence to prevent sin, it would have be- 
fitted the Divine Holiness and Beneficence to have re- 
frained from creation. If sin be the greatest evil, if a free 
finite being will inevitably sin, why create him and put 
him in a world so fair, so full of enjoyment, misleading 


100 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


him into temptations, so full of sorrows, also misleading 
him into rebellion? And, when we answer that thus only 
is virtue possible, and that virtue, goodness, holiness, are 
sources of joy so great that the amount of happiness thus 
given to the good far outweighs the suffering of sinners, 
then we are answered, “Not if the suffering of each 
sinner is infinite and everlasting.” But is the delivery of 
the human soul clearly in favor of the doctrine that the 
retribution for sin is eternal and infinite? 

Sin is something more than ignorance or error, or cor- 
rupted affections and sentiments. All these are evils 
which may lead to sin, but they are not themselves sin. 
Sin is a misdirection of the will. It is a wrong choice. It 
lies at the very centre of our being. Therefore, it can be 
reached neither by light alone nor by anything else which 
is external to the man. We may protect him from all ex- 
ternal assaults ; we may shield him from all tempters from 
without ; we may set before him, in the clearest possible 
light, the reality of the moral law, its provisions and its 
penalties; and, nevertheless, the man may, in spite of all, 
choose to do evil. The freedom of the will is very limited ; 
but, so far as it goes, it is realfreedom. There may be very 
few occasions wherein an ordinary man exercises, either 
consciously or unconsciously, much choice. He may drift 
on, as Cecil somewhere observes, for weeks and for months, 
in the right direction, carried by the current, without 
any clear individual self-conscious determination to go in 
that direction. But, occasionally, opportunities occur for 
choice. Then the soul freely chooses, sometimes against 
light, against good impulses, deliberately yielding to the 
bad. This alone is emphatically sin. It is the fatal defect 
and misdirection of the will itself. It is a wrong choice. 


FOWLER AND] POSSIBILITY IOI 


All the experience of human life shows that this wrong 
choice may be persisted in for an indefinite time. How 
can we be sure that a man, thus persistently choosing 
wrong, will not choose wrong forever, and in sheer obsti- 
nacy draw everlasting suffering upon himself? In that 
case the awful words of our Lord would be literally true. 
It would be better for that man if he had never been born. 
But, by that view, we should seem to tax creative wisdom 
with error in having made a soul which had better never 
been made. The answer which the restorationist has made 
to this question is that divine power has infinite resources, 
and will find means to conquer the obstinate folly of every 
rebellious spirit. Many passages also are quoted from the 
Old and New Testaments, to show that prophets and 
apostles expected a day when all souls should be brought 
into righteousness. Yet there is a metaphysical difficulty 
in accepting that solution of the problem. This difficulty 
arises from the freedom of the will. How can even infi- 
nite power coerce a free spirit? How can even infinite 
power compel the obedience of the heart, the choice of a 
free moral agent? Such compulsion, such coercion, would 
destroy the freedom of the sinner: that would be altering 
his very nature, and rendering him incapable of the high 
happiness of the blessed. We all hope and pray for the 
salvation of all souls; but it is not clear to the eye of 
reason how it is possible even for Almighty Grace to be 
irresistible to a soul which retains its liberty. But liberty 
is the essential condition on which righteousness and sin 
are alone possible. 

A second solution is given by the New Church in the 
infinite goodness of God. It is said that the man who 
obstinately refuses the glorious inheritance of the sons of 


102 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


God will be allowed to enjoy at least the pleasures of the 
beast. In the psychology of the New Church, it is said 
that a persistent choice of evil makes at length the sinner 
hopelessly wedded to evil, his conscience becomes seared, 
he is shut out of the heavens and confined in the hells; 
but he enjoys them in his own low way. This view, how- 
ever, appears inconsistent with our conceptions of the 
infinite holiness and justice of God. It makes too feeble 
a response to the awful sense of necessity laid upon us by 
the moral intuitions. A third solution is therefore pro- 
posed, drawn from the analogy of the spiritual to the 
organic life. In the body, irreparable injury mercifully 
ends in death. The abuse of the body ends in the de- 
struction of the body. Why may not the persistent 
wronging of the soul end in the death of the soul? This 
would be giving a literal interpretation to the saying of 
Saint Paul, that he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh 
reap destruction. Thus, the merciful provision of nature, 
that excess of pain or of mutilation brings death, would 
be extended into the spiritual as well as animal organism. 

The reply is frequently made that the spirit is, in its 
own nature, indestructible; but we confess that we do 
not ourselves feel the weight of merely metaphysical and 
ontological arguments to prove the indestructibility of the 
soul. The strongest argument for human immortality is 
that which Jesus uses with the Sadducees; namely, the 
moral argument. It is inconsistent with our highest con- 
ceptions of the goodness and justice of God to suppose 
that he would give us sucha knowledge of himself and 
awaken in us such hopes of an eternal service of his chil- 
dren, did he not mean to fulfil those hopes. But it is 
apparent that this moral argument loses its force when 


POWER AND POSSIBILITY 13 


applied to a persistently wicked man,—to one who delib- 
erately chooses the things of the flesh in preference to 
those of the spirit, and deliberately rejects the knowledge 
of God. 

On the other hand, we must acknowledge that the 
same sense of justice, which revolts against belief in the 
endless suffering of a single child of God, revolts also 
against allowing triumphant, exultant wickedness, cru- 
elty, injustice, contempt of human life, to escape all other 
punishment than the mere extinction of life in the grave. 
It is certainly difficult for any man who has a strong 
moral sense not to feel that wickedness, deliberate disre- 
gard of moral law, deserves a more positive penalty than 
simple annihilation. It is easy for us, in some states 
of mind, to condemn the idea of retributive or vindictive 
punishment. At such times, we are inclined to affirm 
that all punishment should be purely remedial or prevent- 
ive. But when we see a man deliberately disregarding 
what he knows to be the rights of his fellow-men, sinning 
against clear, undoubted light, and without the palliation 
of impetuous passion or apparent necessity, it is difficult 
for us not to feel with Dr. Franklin, concerning the de- 
liberate traitor to his country, that if there is no retribu- 
tive justice and suffering awarded to him, in the world to 
come, there at least ought to be. In James Burgh’s re- 
markable volume on the dignity of human nature, he 
draws an argument for believing in the immortality of 
souls from this demand of our moral nature,—that the 
wicked, who have gone through this life without adequate 
punishment, should receive a due recompense in the world 
LOSCOMEC, 

For our own part, we do not see that the light of nature, 


104 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


or that the light of the New Testament, makes the final 
fate of a persistently rebellious and wicked man clear and 
unmistakable. We utterly refuse to believe in the ever- 
lasting torment of any sentient being, and we should re- 
joice to believe in the final happiness of all souls. But no 
happiness worth having is possible without virtue, no 
virtue is possible without freedom; and, with freedom, 
there is always possibility of persistent choice of wrong. 
Where, however, reason fails to point out clearly the 
probable issue and sequence of events, we should walk by 
the light of faith, which is the highest reason. The high- 
est reason assures us, above all things, of the infinite wis- 
dom, the omnipotent power, the unfathomable love of 
God. We may therefore be assured, at least, that every 
soul which is worth saving will be saved; that the uni- 
verse is framed on laws of such perfect wisdom that they 
will result in the best possible effects, not only for the 
race, but for each individual. But God alone knows what 
is possible, and what is really best. 


VIE 
EOGICPAND PILOVE! 


SINCE the days of Swedenborg and of Kant, the attri- 
butes of spiritual or personal being have been usually 
grouped under three general heads,— intellect, feeling, 
and will. In the consideration of the Infinite and 
Almighty Being, these take the slightly different phases 
of knowledge, love, and power. The intellect of man is 
his power of inter-electing truth from falsehood. It is the 
power of perceiving realities and imaginations, estimating 
and comparing them, and taking note of their relations. 
The result of these processes is knowledge. But it is evi- 
dent that in the Divine mind there is no need of this 
gradual process of inter-election. With him, all knowl- 
edge and all wisdom are present from eternity to eternity. 

The intellectual attributes of God may therefore, in the 
sum of their results, be more justly called infinite wisdom, 
which includes all knowledge. The will of man is feeble 
and tentative. It exerts no measurable amount of physi- 
cal force. It is only capable of guiding Divine force, and 
that only toa certain degree. This ability of the will to 
guide force suggests to us, however, that force is itself the 
product of will. So imperious is this suggestion, so close 
is the association of ideas between will and power, that all 
men, in all ages, have assumed that our finite wills have a 
limited power of exerting force; and that sharper analysis, 


106 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


which has shown that we have only the power to guide 
the forces of nature, does not destroy it, does not even 
weaken the presumption which is created by that universal 
assumption. Nay, if we run from this sharper to the 
sharpest analysis, we may say that the guidance of forces 
when in unstable equilibrium, although requiring only an 
infinitesimal force (which may be considered as zero with 
reference to the forces guided), does require an infinitesi- 
mal force, and cannot be accomplished with an absolute 
zero of force. If, therefore, the amount of mechanical 
force directly exerted by the human will be infinitely in- 
finitesimal, it is not an absolute zero. But the forces of 
nature, thus shown to be cognate with the infinitesimal 
forces of the human will, are also thus shown to be the 
result of an infinite will, of that Being in whom lies the 
abyss of all potentiality. 

The feelings of man are changeable, evanescent,—rising 
into intense heat, dying away into indifference. In this 
changeable, fickle form, they of course cannot be attrib- 
uted to the Infinite One. But a closer analysis of human 
feeling shows that the apparent excitement and excess of 
passion arise either from a physical state or from a mis- 
direction of feeling, growing out of ignorance and _hin- 
drance. Physical states, however, can, in the Divine mind, 
only be a knowledge of our states; and ignorance and 
hindrance, of course, are foreign to our conception of the 
All-wise and the Almighty. As a man’s knowledge in- 
creases, and his range of sympathies with his fellow-men 
increases the tumultuous passions of his heart grow 
calmer ; and he sees more clearly that the highest state of 
feeling is a settled perpetual enjoyment of the joy of others. 
He thus learns to attribute to the Infinite Being an inex- 


LOGIC AND LOVE 107 


haustible benevolence, an all-embracing love. Thus, in 
the trinity of Divine attributes, love is the analogue to 
human feeling. In man, we find mind, heart, and will; 
in God, we recognize wisdom, love, and power. 

In previous lectures, we have endeavored to show that 
both physics and metaphysics —the examination of the 
world without and of the world within — prove God to be 
unerring and omnipotent. Let us now pass to the in- 
quiry what the light of nature may show concerning his 
moral attributes. In particular, let us ask what are the 
natural bases on which we may build our acceptance of 
the Beloved Apostle’s declaration that God is love. 

Let us, in the first place, frankly confess that there are 
new difficulties attending this division of our inquiry. In 
morphological and teleological inquiries, we remain wholly, 
or almost wholly, in the realm of the intellect. We show 
that a certain form in nature is the embodiment of our 
own a priori ideas of number, space, or time; perhaps, 
also, that a second form embodies the same idea in a 
totally different manner. If this were discovered to be 
the case in two works of human art, we should say that, 
unquestionably, the workman who built, or at least, the 
master who planned those forms, was cognizant of that 
relation. We add that we can see no valid reason why 
the same induction should not be made concerning the 
Master-builder of nature. Or we show that an organ is, 
by many complicated relations, adapted to perform a cer- 
tain office, and that it performs that office admirably. In 
this case there is no reason why we should not draw the 
same conclusion that we should from an artificial organ, 
there is no reason why we should not admit that the in- 
strument was skilfully made for the very purpose of ac- 


108 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


complishing that end. At least, we may say that no 
objections ever yet brought against these arguments from 
final causes have any real logical validity. 

But, when we pass behind the mechanical purpose, and 
behind the intellectual conception,— that is to say, when 
we come to the moral motive,— we are upon different 
ground. We feel the great difference, even when the 
argument would prove the moral motive of a fellow-man. 
It is easy to show that Raphael had a very clear concep- 
tion of the human figure in its variety of forms and 
motions. It is easy to show that a Jacquard loom must 
have been invented by a man thoroughly acquainted with 
the weaving of silk. But it is quite another thing to at- 
tempt to discover the amount of moral and religious feel- 
ing, of philanthropy and piety, which moved either of 
those men to his inventions. Feeling does not come di- 
rectly within the pale of intellectual proof. It can be 
manifested, it can be recognized from the manifestations; 
but the canons by which we recognize it have never been 
brought into distinct formulas, and perhaps they never can 
be. There are even physical facts which, at present, re- 
fuse in like manner to come within the formulas of words ; 
that is to say, there are physical inferences, which we are 
certainly justified in making, but which we cannot justify 
by any canon of logic ever yet devised. Some inferences 
of this character are as certain as any deductions of geom- 
etry, and yet no man dares attempt to give his reasons for 
drawing the inferences. No man can mistake a plum for 
a cherry, but no botanist has ever yet succeeded in de- 
scribing the distinction between those two fruits. No 
man would hesitate to swear to the identity of one with 
whom he is well acquainted, but no man can safely at- 


LOGIC AND LOVE IOQ 


tempt to say how he identifies even his best known friend. 
These are illustrations of the fact that there are things 
recognized by external sight as being absolutely certain ; 
and, nevertheless, we cannot put into words the grounds 
of our certainty. We may emphatically say that our 
knowledge of the external world exceeds our own ability 
to formulate it in words. 

We may say still more emphatically that the sphere of 
the internal affections is not under the direct dominion of 
the intellect. No man of good character and sound mind 
is without friends, of whose fidelity, permanent good-will, 
and affection he is certain, and justly certain; yet no man 
could put the evidence on which he builds his confidence 
of the love of mother, of wife, or brother or sister, into a 
form that would stand the canons of strict inductive logic. 
It would be easier to prove by intellectual argument the 
personal identity of a friend than to prove in that manner 
his personal love toward you. Ifa man asked for strictly 
scientific, logical, intellectual proof of his wife’s love, his 
peace would be at the mercy of any damned Iago. But 


‘¢ Love asks no evidence 
To prove itself well placed.” 


The evidence comes unsought, unasked, in a form that 
satisfies the heart, and, through the heart, the head. The 
satisfaction is not the less perfect from our inability to 
put the proof into logical form. We are just as sure of 
the difference between plums and cherries as though we 
could describe it. We are just as sure that there is a 
fundamental likeness between the mental processes and 
feelings of our fellow-men and our own as though we were 
capable of demonstrating the likeness. Thus, also, we 


ITO POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


are as justly sure that certain friends and relations love 
us as we are that we love them; although we can give no 
proof of their love capable of reduction to a syllogistic 
form. 

When, therefore, we turn to the question whether the 
love of God is manifested toward us, whether we have 
any evidence of his kindness toward individuals, we ought 
not to be surprised that the evidence is incapable of being 
put into the logical forms to which the morphological and 
teleological arguments for his wisdom are reduced. Yet 
there is the same kind of consilience of inductions. The 
trouble is that each line of induction is so much more 
vague, so difficult of definition. Let us also acknowledge 
that there are here counter-lines, which puzzle us by ap- 
parently, at first sight, running against the main conclu- 
sion. Nothing in nature can be quoted as an evidence of 
intellectual error or a breach of intellectual harmony. But 
when we are arguing for the beneficence of the Deity, and 
draw our inferences from the adaptation of nature to 
man’s needs, from the multiplicity of the sources of 
human pleasure, from the wide-spread happiness of 
the animal creation, including man, we are confronted 
also with an array of evils, or apparent evils. The storm, 
the earthquake, the pestilence, fire and sword, wild beasts 
and destructive insects, poisons, insidious contagion, the 
thousand ills that flesh is heir to, and by which we are 
afflicted in mind and body and estate,-—these all seem 
inconsistent with the doctrine that God is love. These 
difficulties are pressed upon our consideration; not 
merely by irreligious men, who think thereby to overthrow 
Christian faith in the goodness of God: they are brought 
forward, also, by thoughtful and somewhat religious nat- 


LOGIC AND LOVE BOL 


ures, as real difficulties in the way of finding religious 
peace. They are sometimes brought forward by truly 
religious persons,—not that they themselves have any 
doubt concerning the love of God, but they ask what 
they shall say to others who are in doubt. They do 
not know how to answer those who complain that God 
hides himself in clouds and in darkness. 

In the attempt to solve this problem and to make our 
religious faith stand justified to reason, let us, first of all, 
not forget that, although the matter is not within the pale 
of direct intellectual proof, we are not justified in refus- 
ing credence to the instincts of the heart, simply because 
we fail to explain them by our intellectual view. A few 
years ago, a report was published, giving an abstract of 
a sermon from a professedly Christian pulpit, speaking 
contemptuously of the devout gratitude of certain sur- 
vivors from a terrible shipwreck. The preacher asked: 
“Why not thank God for drowning their shipmates as 
much as for saving the survivors? Why have a God that 
picks up a few? Why not have a God that would prevent 
shipwreck?” The preacher is reported to have answered 
that God neither drowned the one, nor saved the other. 
He simply established general laws, by which or under 
which the shipwreck occurred, and part of those on board 
perished. But this was only putting the difficulty one 
step further back. Why did the All-wise appoint gen- 
eral laws under which such discriminations were possi- 
ble, that one should be taken and another left?. The 
preacher who thought thus to escape the irreverence of 
finding fault with God for destroying life — by ridiculing 
the gratitude of men for deliverance from death, and 
declaring that it was not God, but only his law, which did 


II2 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


either—was not yet filled with the sense of infinite 
knowledge, infinite power, and infinite love. 

The absolute and invariable laws of the physical uni- 
verse leave, as we have previously shown, the opportunity 
for freedom of action in man. Certainly, men are not 
prevented by the universal reign of law from pursuing 
their own thoughts, and giving them a partial embodi- 
ment in material forms. The Duke of Argyll has admira- 
bly shown that it is the reign of law which gives the 
finest opportunity for the display of intellect, in using 
that law to fulfil special designs. Peirce has shown, in 
his lectures on analytical morphology, that it is the reign 
of law which makes the world the school-house for man, 
capable of developing human thought and stimulating 
men to a griorvz research. His son has shown, from the 
doctrine of mathematical probabilities applied to the prog- 
ress of physical science, that the human intellect is pre- 
adapted to the investigation of existing laws. The reign 
of law, which thus leaves the finite, created will and in- 
tellect free, surely cannot bind or fetter the uncreated 
God. He can, without any violation of law, in the simple 
guidance of forces according to law, bring any event to 
pass which he pleases, provided only that the event is 
not forbidden by moral or logical necessities. He, being 
almighty, can control and guide all physical forces; but 
he cannot do that which is unreasonable and absurd, nor 
that which is unjust. 

Whatever physical sufferings are brought upon men, 
therefore, are sent by the express foreknowledge of God. 
Of course, we cannot believe that the destruction of a 
part of those on board the wrecked ship and the saving 
of the rest came from his miraculous intervention; but 


LOGIC AND LOVE Ts 


they came in fulfilment of his will. They came as the 
result of natural forces, acting under universal, invariable 
laws. Does it follow that the survivors are not to thank 
God for their deliverance? or that, thanking him for 
deliverance, they are also to give thanks for the destruc- 
tion of their companions? To answer in the affirmative, 
as was done in the reported sermon, would be not only 
to reject the teachings of the New Testament, but to 
reject the dictates of common sense and the natural 
impulses of the human heart. And this rejection is 
asked in obedience to a fallacious argument, drawing 
finite conclusions from infinite premises. 

Every wise parent in his treatment of his children is 
obliged sometimes to do that which is disagreeable to 
them. Does it follow that they are not to thank him for 
kindnesses and gifts, unless they also thank him for the 
things whose use they do not understand, and which are 
at the moment irksome to them? It may be that I hear 
a complaint that some friend who has treated me with 
uniform kindness has treated some other person harshly. 
Does it follow that I am not to be grateful to him for his 
kindness to me, unless I am at the same time grateful 
for his alleged harshness to another man? 

In our relations to the All-seeing, the All-wise, and 
All-good, we know with certainty only concerning our- 
selves, and are not always certain even there. If I know 
that to me the lines are cast in pleasant places and that 
I have a goodly heritage, my heart impels me to thanks- 
giving; and it is reasonable that I should be thankful. 
If, at the same time, I see others suffer, apparently less 
favored than I, and beyond the reach of my power to 
help, I will trust that the Infinite Goodness knows how 


IIl4 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


to make that apparent evil a real good to them. The 
sovereign will of God is not arbitrary. It moves under 
the guidance of infinite wisdom and at the command of 
infinite love. We may not be able to understand all his 
counsels; but, surely, we are not, on that account, for- 
bidden to be grateful for that which we do understand 
and which we see and feel to be good. Those who laugh 
at our thanksgiving, and declare it to be unscientific 
to have devout affections of gratitude and trust in the 
Divine Providence, will some day, in a wider reach of 
thought, perceive that there is no greater folly than that 
which on the strength of feeble logic, drawing unsound 
inferences from mere forms of human speech, assails the 
convictions of religious faith. Those convictions are built 
upon something stronger than any argument. They are 
built upon the holiest and purest instincts of the human 
heart, and upon a direct vision of things invisible to out- 
ward sense, but nevertheless real, immutable, eternal. 
The earthquake, the storm, the battle-field, do not testify 
any more strongly to the sovereignty of God and to the 
terrible mystery of his decrees, than the flowers and sing- 
ing birds, the innocent affections of human homes and 
holy examples of human virtue, bear witness to his un- 
speakable love. It is the cultivation of a grateful spirit, 
by dwelling on these manifest mercies, which will finally 
bring us into that higher state of mind, in which we can 
rejoice to believe that it is also in loving kindness that 
the All-wise and All-good creates evil. 

In looking at the testimony of outward nature, we may 
first observe that happiness preponderates over suffering. 
Among all the tribes of animals, the occurrence of disease 
is exceptional. The vast majority of animals meet a pain- 


LOGIC AND LOVE IT5 


less death either by the jaws of a stronger, or by a quiet, 
drowsy loss of sense and of life through drying up or 
being frozen. While living, they are apparently playful 
and happy. It is when we come to man that the mystery 
begins. Yet, to the vast majority of men, life is sweet. 
They complain of it, but they are unwilling to give it up. 
The exercise of every faculty gives pleasure. Aristotle, 
the prince of all observers of nature, is said to have de- 
fined pleasure to be the emotion arising from the unim- 
peded exercise of any faculty. Yet we must acknowledge 
that there are many hindrances to impede human action. 
There are many diseases which cripple man’s powers, 
many which give him absolute pain. Pessimism declares 
that, with man, misery is the rule, happiness the excep- 
tion; but this is a gross exaggeration. If we confine our- 
selves to the report of observation, and to more easily meas- 
ured enjoyment, we must admit that, in regard to human 
as well as animal life, the preponderance of testimony is 
in favor of the beneficence of the Creator. Carrying our 
investigations no further, we might still say: The ob- 
scure passages in a volume cannot destroy the meaning of 
the plain passages. The general testimony of nature is 
in favor of the kindness of God, and we shall not reject it 
simply because we do not understand the testimony of 
suffering and grief. 

But there is a second way of viewing the whole ques- 
tion. The different kinds of good are to be weighed 
against each other. We are to consider whether the very 
things which, in relation to the lower good, seem evil, 
may not in themselves be conducive to a higher good. 
As we count animal life of slight value in comparison 
with human, so we count the pleasures of sense as noth- 


116 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ing, in comparison with those of the mind and of the 
heart. Nor can we refuse to see that, in all the higher 
departments of man’s life, hindrances are, in an important 
sense, helps. The mind finds an intense intellectual 
pleasure in the surmounting of intellectual difficulty. If 
we admit Aristotle’s definition, that pleasure is the emo- 
tion which accompanies the unimpeded exercise of energy, 
we must not forget that the exercise of energy seems to 
imply an obstacle to be surmounted. The energy of the 
muscles demands a mass to be moved; the energy of 
the mind, difficulties to be solved. It may be so with the 
energy of the heart likewise. Even beauty and virtue are 
appreciated more keenly by contrast with ugliness and 
sin. It is said that Swedenborg reported that even in 
heaven the angels in their private theatricals introduce 
bad characters as shadows, to make the light of virtue 
more effective. 

In other words, there may well be supposed to be an 
invincible necessity, in constituting a world wherein men 
taste the high happiness of intellectual and moral growth 
and development, an invincible necessity for permitting 
the occurrence of error, sin, and suffering. Furthermore, 
it may well be supposed that, out of this very necessity, 
an all-wise Creator will extort higher benefits, so that we 
shall finally see that there is a maximum good in the 
world, in spite of all the evil. That this is the case 
may be inferred, not only from the axiom of the infinite 
wisdom and goodness of God, to which our first survey of 
the universe leads us, but from a consideration of the evil 
itself. It has been said that Nature is as cruel to the 
race as she can be, without destroying it. Yet the high- 
est development and highest happiness of the race, if the 


LOGIC AND LOVE 117 


quality as well as amount of happiness be taken into ac- 
count, is found in countries where the soil is not, by nat- 
ure, most productive nor the climate most perfect, but in 
countries where a rougher climate and more sterile soil 
combine to demand of men constant labor as the very 
condition of existence; and men find it also the condition 
of happiness. 


“‘ Life’s cares are comforts ; such by Heaven designed ; 
He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.” 


Still, we must admit to the complaining and perplexed 
inquirer that this seems harsh. It seems to require the 
misery of some, in order to make the happiness of others. 
It is all very well for the intellectually and morally suc- 
cessful to feel that, without difficulties and temptations, 
they would not have known and rejoiced in their strength ; 
but what shall we say of the feeble-minded, the perplexed, 
the erring, the sinful, or of those crushed beneath inextri- 
cable misfortune and suffering? For these cases there 
are two considerations, which may make the reconciliation 
of both with the divine goodness less difficult. In the 
first place, we may observe that, as the heart alone know- 
eth its own bitterness, so the heart alone knoweth its own 
consolations. We frequently misjudge in our perspective. 
It is frequently the case that, when we come into direct 
contact with great sufferers, we find that they discover in 
their own case alleviation and compensations. The horror 
and suffering are, very frequently, not so great as they at 
a distance appeared to be. It was our imagination that 
lent exaggerated tones to the coloring. The night is very 
seldom pitch-dark : the starlight finds its way through the 
densest clouds. 


I18 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


In the second place, we may observe that, when we set 
man high in intellectual and moral qualities above other 
animals, we have not yet set him high enough. Man is 
also always, more or less, a religious being. He has more 
or less faith in the reality of his own intercourse with the 
Infinite God. And when we compare his faith in God and 
in God’s love as a source of happiness with other sources, 
it is found to be far superior even to the satisfaction of 
a clear conscience. The very anxiety with which men 
seek to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with 
their faith in the goodness of God shows how high a value 
they set on the knowledge of God. There is no life, no 
happiness, comparable for an instant with the life which is 
sustained by resting in implicit confidence on the Al- 
mighty arm, with the happiness that flows from a trusting 
surrender to the care of God’s eternal love. The longings 
of the human heart are infinite, and cannot be satisfied 
with any finite object. And, now, it is a fact of experi- 
ence that the very evils which create the doubt concern- 
ing God’s love, are the agents which most frequently 
bring men into a peaceful trust in that love. Every pastor, 
of any experience, can recall cases in which slight losses 
and troubles produced unhappiness, complaint, and rebell- 
ion against Divine Providence; but additional, heavier 
troubles and deeper griefs brought, first religious faith, 
and then religious cheerfulness and settled peace. «This 
fact has been poetically expressed by saying that God 
presses us down with one hand until we feel his other 
hand supporting us, and then we are at rest, Of course, 
this still leaves the question (perhaps insoluble to finite 
minds) why the human heart should be so constituted that 
it must needs be unhappy before it can be happy. That 


LOGIC AND LOVE 16 Ke) 


may arise from necessities of moral freedom which are, at 
least at present, unfathomable by our intellects. 

This suggests another element to be taken into con- 
sideration in weighing the testimony of nature concerning 
the being of God. We have seen that the only entities 
absolutely known to us are time, space, and spirit. We 
might add mechanical force; but force, being under the 
control of spirit, leads to the inferences that it is a mere 
creation of spirit, and that the material world is but the 
expression or symbol of thought, through which the In- 
finite Spirit speaks to us, and by which he enables us to 
speak to each other. Man is thus of nearer kindred to the 
Creator than he is to the creation. The Creative Spirit 
talks to us through the material universe, as we talk to 
each other. The whole progress of the physical sciences 
(as Joseph Henry said in his last letter to Mr. Patterson) 
has been an interrogation of the Author of nature, and 
the reception from him of intelligible answers to every 
intelligent question. To this state of things, we may 
apply that argument of Jesus implied in his conversation 
with the Sadducees concerning immortality. The beings 
with whom God thus deigns to hold converse must have 
been made in his image, and therefore in the image of his 
eternity. In man’s power to untangle and decipher parts 
of the mysteries of creation, in his ability to trace law 
throughout the whole, he has an evidence and pledge of 
his own superiority to nature, and of his own immortality. 
And, if there be any part of his own nature higher than 
another, it is certainly his moral and religious nature, his 
sense of justice, his expansive charity, his recognition of 
his relation to God, which exalt him. He may well, there- 
fore, have an assurance that the justice and mercy which 


120 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


seem sometimes obscured here will appear more clearly in 
the eternal world. In that realm, some of the hindrances 
to a perfect justice may be removed, and every soul be 
fully satisfied that all the dealings of the infinitely Just 
and Merciful are right. 

At this point arises, anew, the question to which we 
have before alluded, of the future of retribution for sin. 
If the soul be of its own right immortal, and if it be of its 
very nature free to choose, why may not a soul perpetually 
choose evil, and thus bring upon itself everlasting misery? 
And how can the goodness of God be reconciled with the 
everlasting anguish of a single creature? Better that the 
whole universe should have remained in the abyss of 
potentiality, than that a single created being should suffer 
eternal and infinite torment. To this outcry of the heart, 
two answers have been made by those who have held to 
the doctrine of everlasting punishment. It is said that 
everlasting, wilful refusal to repent would deserve ever- 
lasting punishment. To which it may be replied that, if 
that punishment be infinite torment, it would have been 
better not to create a soul capable of everlasting wilful 
refusal. In answer to this, it is sometimes said that ever- 
lasting torment is not necessarily infinite torment, that 
the misery may be finite and proportioned to the sin, 
But, again, it is replied that eternity of even finite pain 
becomes infinite, and outweighs all good. In answer to 
which, it is again said by some that punishment is not 
necessarily torment. By some, it has been said that, in 
the goodness of God, the punishment may be the means of 
a lower kind of happiness; that is, if a man will not be- 
come a saint, he may be allowed to become a beast, and 
to be contented with beastly pleasures. Others say that 


LOGIC AND LOVE I2t 


a fine is punishment, and that everlasting punishment 
may be the being perpetually below what one might have 
been. Still others press the literal meaning of Saint Paul’s 
language, that those who sow to the flesh shall of the flesh 
reap destruction. 

In support of the latter view, it may be said that the 
arguments to show the soul’s immortality do not strictly 
show that it is in its own right immortal. It is capable 
of communing with God: that ability to commune with 
the Infinite and Eternal is a pledge of immortality. But 
when the soul abdicates its heaven-born position, sells its 
heavenly birthright for earthly pottage, ceases to com- 
mune with the infinite and eternal Fountain of life, and 
confines all its thoughts and aspirations to the use of 
things that perish with the using, its thoughts have cer- 
tainly become mortal, it is no longer feeding on the bread 
from heaven, it has become of the earth earthy. Why may 
it not destroy itself by absolute spiritual starvation? The 
light of nature, which asks for an immortal life whereby 
to vindicate its own assertion of the infinite goodness of 
God, cannot admit the existence of infinite and eternal 
torment. But neither can it prove the ultimate restora- 
tion of every soul to the highest estate of eternal happi- 
ness. It cannot even disprove the possible extinction of 
a soul by the persistent choice of the ways of death in 
preference to the path of life. 

The love of God is chiefly evidenced by the imperative 
demand of the hearts which he has created for an infinite 
love whereon to lean. To doubt his infinite love is to in- 
troduce into the heart an element of sadness outweighing 
all possible causes of happiness. It would be as irrational 
and intrinsically incredible in the moral sphere, as doubt- 


I22 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ing the intelligible order of nature would be in the intel- 
lectual sphere. We fall back upon the irresistible assump- 
tion that “there is no vice in the constitution of things,” 
but that the everlasting harmonies of the universe re-echo, 
from eternity to eternity, the song of the angels at Beth- 
lehem,— “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good-will toward men.” 


VIII. 
BEAUTY. 


In our survey of the universe, as revealed to the senses 
and to reason, we are always inclined to classify, under 
general abstract heads, the impressions made upon us. 
These generalizations and abstractions proceed upon vari- 
ous grounds, and each one may embrace a greater ora less 
diversity of objects. Men constantly use language which 
seems to imply the existence of distinct entities, forming 
the grounds of such classification. It has been a matter 
of debate, with psychologists and ontologists, whether 
these generic and specific grounds of classification have 
any existence outside the human mind, and, if so, what is 
the nature of that existence. With certain persons, the 
attempt to answer this inquiry leads at once to a refer- 
ence to the Divine Being. For example, what is truth? 
To me, no answer is so satisfactory as that which defines 
truth to be conformity to the knowledge of the All-know- 
ing. That is, if we could see the whole truth concerning 
any matter, it would be seeing it as God sees it. No other 
definition of truth has been satisfactory to us. It is not 
long ago that a distinguished Englishman defined truth to 
be that body of opinions on which the best-informed men 
are, for the time being, agreed. According to this defini- 
tion, that which was true ten years ago may be false 
to-day, and become true again ten years hence. But we 


I24 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


cannot believe that that definition will ever become true, 
according to its own definition of truth, because well- 
informed men can never agree in the acceptance of such 
an absurdity. 

In like manner, we can see no answer to the question of 
the Psalmist, Who shall show us any good? except in 
defining the good to be that which God’s infinite wisdom 
and love decide to be the best. No temporary expediency 
can satisfy a rational man. He desires to do that which 
will be good not only for himself, but for his children and 
for his race forever. What that is can be directly, abso- 
lutely seen and recognized only by the absolutely Wise and 
Good. Thus, also, we would define the beautiful as that 
which pleases God, that which is beautiful in his eyes. As 
our own minds are more and more cultivated, we attain to 
a higher and higher standard of beauty. There is no rea- 
son why this may not go on forever, no reason why the 
Infinite Being is not capable of seeing an immortal and 
uncontained beauty which is beyond our power of vision. 

We propose to consider this theme of beauty a little 
more in detail. We expand the idea of beauty rather than 
that of the good or the true, not because it is more im- 
portant, but because it is somewhat easier to handle in 
detail. The sense of beauty is a peculiar pleasure. It may 
be difficult to bring it under Aristotle’s definition, as a 
concomitant of the unimpeded exercise of power. The 
power in this case is hardly exercised: it is a capacity 
rather than a faculty,—the capacity of perception. The 
sense of beauty, the feeling of beauty, in our finite souls, 
is the pleasure given by the perception of an object con- 
taining nothing to hinder, to interrupt, to dull, to deaden, 
to shock, or to weary the perceptive powers. The object 


BEAUTY 125 


must, therefore, have both unity and interest for the mind. 
These requirements make it, therefore, necessary that it 
should have either an actual or a virtual complexity, and 
that, nevertheless, its parts should be bound together in 
one law. It is not necessary that the law, the intellectual 
mode of connection, should be visible; but it is necessary 
that the connection should be felt at the moment of the 
perception of the object. This appears to us to be the 
widest and most satisfactory definition of beauty: it is 
that quality of an object which makes it give pleasure in 
the mere perception of the object, irrespective of all asso- 
ciation of ideas and of all symbolism. But the effect of 
beauty is, in almost every case, heightened to a greater or 
less degree by the association of ideas, or by the recogni- 
tion of expression, or by the perception of utility. 

The simplest form of beauty will be found in geometri- 
cal figures. By analyzing and describing the elements of 
beauty in a geometrical figure, we shall obtain formulz 
which will apply with slight modifications to other kinds 
of beauty. A geometrical figure, in order to be beautiful, 
must manifestly have a law. It is not necessary that that 
law should be understood, but only that its existence 
should be perceived; that is to say, the eye must run 
along the outline of the figure, or over its surface, with 
the easy feeling of being led along from point to point. 
In the technical language of mathematics, the outline or 
the surface of a beautiful object must be a locus. All the 
points of the line, or of the surface, must be so arranged 
that a mathematician of sufficient technical skill could 
frame a sentence which, in describing the position of 
one point, should describe the position of all. If this 
be not so, then the artistic eye will detect some break, 


126 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


some breach of continuity, which will be a hindrance to 
the unimpeded sweep of the vision, and so rob the be- 
holder of pleasure. Of course, it is possible to make 
sometimes a combination of such lines which, in spite 
of its real want of unity, shall be pleasant to the eye. 
But it is pleasant because the combination approaches 
the form of some real single locus sufficiently to deceive 
the eye by its suggestion. This demand for unity in the 
geometric figure is repeated in regard to every object 
which can be called beautiful. Such an object must 
have a unity which makes itself felt by the observer. 
The mind must be able to take it all in with ease, 
and to perceive that the parts are connected, even 
though it do not perceive the precise mode of connec- 
tion. The landscape, says Emerson, belongs to the man 
whose eye can integrate the parts. And I add, that the 
landscape is not beautiful unless the parts are capable 
of being integrated. The picture must have unity, or 
it is not a picture, whether it be painted on canvas or 
only on the retina of the eye. 

The beauty of a merely geometrical figure is propor- 
tioned not only to the simplicity of its law, but also to the 
variety of the manifestations of that law. For example, 
the ellipse has more variety than the circle, and is there. 
fore more beautiful. The elastic curve, simple in its law 
as a circle, and yet, having a marvellously complicated 
variety of figures, becomes one of the most beautiful of 
curves. The charm of the acorn arises from its combina- 
tion of variety with simplicity. The demand for variety 
of manifestation, like the demand for unity, is made in 
whatever department of the beautiful we look, whether at 
the landscape, or at flowers or living figures, or at poetry 


BEAUTY 127 


or the drama or music. That object of beauty is finest, 
and awakens the deepest sense of beauty, in which the 
unity is felt most perfectly from beginning to end, but in 
which, nevertheless, the number and relation of the parts 
have the greatest variety and freshness. : 

We also demand, in a mere geometrical figure, a cer- 
tain proportion of parts. One ellipse is more beautiful 
than another, if the proportion of its length to its breadth 
is better. 

We have made numerous experiments upon unpreju- 
diced persons, ignorant of the object of our inquiries, and 
have found that Hay’s law, in general, holds good,— that 
it is not simplicity of proportion in the length of lines, 
but in the proportion of the actual or potential angles of 
the figure, which creates beauty. Hay’s law, confirmed 
by these experiments, thus shows that direction or angle 
is a more important element of beauty than distance is. 
We might have reached the same conclusion by simply 
considering the facts of similarity of figure. The smallest 
miniature may be as expressive as a life-size portrait. 
The elliptical motion of an atom is intellectually as grand 
an object of study as the elliptical motion of a planet. 
The difference between the two is in the amount of space 
and time occupied by one or the other: the direction and 
form in the two cases are alike. A law of proportion 
holds also in other objects of beauty as part of the law 
of unity, so that without proportion the perception of 
unity would be impeded. In the simple case of the rec- 
tangle, the eye glances across from corner to corner, and 
receives an impression from the direction of its motion 
with reference to the enclosing sides. In like manner, in 
an ellipse, the eye runs from the ends to the mid-sides, 


128 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


and secretly compares its direction of motion with the 
principal diameters. But in a picture we have not only 
this proportion of dimensions in the outlines of the draw- 
ing: there is also proportion in the relative depth of light 
and shadow, and in the similarity and contrast of colors. 
In musical compositions the proportion is felt in the 
rhythmical balancing of parts, also in the harmony and 
succession of chords, also in the relative strength of tone, 
and in the balance and blending of the voices and instru- 
ments. We would remark in passing, that Hay’s law 
must be modified; geometric beauty lying in approxima- 
tion to the square root of five, musical beauty in approx- 
imation to roots of two. 

In the organic world, another element of beauty enters 
more distinctly, although it has a partial effect in some of 
the examples which we have already treated. The law 
which gives unity to the geometrical figure of the crystal, 
or to architectural ornamentation, is usually carried out 
with such close approximation to perfection that no oppor- 
tunity is left for the exercise of imagination. More pleas- 
ure would be obtained were the suggestion equally clear, 
but the approximation less perfect, thus leaving some work 
for the imagination. This is the case with the majority of 
organic forms. Not only do they embrace much greater 
variety in their unity than crystalline structure does; but 
the unity, being partially concealed by various causes, re- 
quires some exercise of imagination to detect it. We fre- 
quently find a stiff, set appearance in artificial flowers or 
stuffed animals, arising from their perfect symmetry. The 
higher beauty of living plants and animals arises from the 
concealment of symmetry in their ordinary positions, 
which leaves to the imagination the discovery of the sym- 


BEAUTY 129 


metry in its potentiality. An analogous fact holds in all 
higher works of art: they must have symmetry as well as 
unity, but it must not be thrust obtrusively on the atten- 
tion. 

Beauty is frequently enhanced in our eyes by some asso- 
ciation of ideas, awakened on the perception of the beauti- 
ful object. Erasmus Darwin maintained that all sense of 
beauty arises from association of ideas with early sensuous 
pleasure. He wished, by a forced application of Occam’s 
razor, to reduce all pleasures to the gratification of the 
bodily senses, or to relief from bodily discomfort. Accord- 
ing to him, beauty consists in some more or less remote 
resemblance to the mother’s breast, and gives pleasure 
through association with the memory of the earliest satis- 
faction of appetite. To obviate the objection that, on that 
principle, a child brought up by hand would have no sense 
of beauty, we have only to bring in the principle of ata- 
vism, or persistent heredity. The theory seems to us too 
whimsically inadequate to merit serious discussion. Yet 
the pleasure arising from the perception of beauty is, fre- 
quently, very much enhanced by pleasant memories and 
associations. A landscape becomes more beautiful when 
it has been familiar from childhood, or when it embraces 
the home of beloved ones, or when it contains the site of 
some interesting episode of history. Emerson truly says 
that the heroism and virtue of men lend a glory and charm 
to the frame in which their actions are set. 

Beauty is also enhanced, at times almost immeasurably, 
by its expressiveness. Every natural fact, says Emerson, 
is the type of some spiritual fact. A beautiful object has 
frequently a symbolism, either natural or artificial, by which 
it suggests other thoughts than those which it directly 


130 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


embodies. Fulfilling its own law of unity in variety and 
variety in unity, it is also frequently, by an original law of 
correspondence, directly suggestive of some spiritual truth. 
And, if not, it is frequently adopted, by a conscious con- 
sent and device of men, to be the symbol of truth, not 
directly or naturally connected with it. The meanings, 
advantages, and limitations of this artificial symbolism are 
obvious, and are less important for our present subject 
than the natural symbolism of correspondence. Many 
movements of animate and inanimate nature bear a sort 
of analogy to movements of our minds, and all our daily 
language implies a recognition of that fact. A thousand 
familiar phrases may be quoted in illustration, such as 
fiery zeal, a gust of passion, a storm of anger, soaring 
hope, brilliant imagination, dark counsel. 

But there is a natural expression more subtle than that 
which shows itself in the use of such metaphors. For ex- 
ample, consider the expressiveness of tones and the inar- 
ticulate cries of animals. The plaintive lament of our 
meadow lark, the bold free tone of the brown thrush and 
the oriole, the joyous hilarity of the bobolink, the question- 
ing whine of bleating sheep, the cheery interrogation of a 
horse’s neigh,— these, and similar instances, prove that in 
the minute imperceptible rhythm of a tone there is a 
moral expressiveness. We do not think that this expres- 
sion of tone has ever been successfully analyzed into the 
association of ideas, The meadow lark and the bobolink 
come at the same time into the same meadow. The dif- 
ference of their tones is recognized before we notice the 
pensive stride of the one and the ecstatic fluttering of the 
other. 

The human countenance, also, and, by analogy, other 


BEAUTY 131 


animate forms have a power of expression transcending all 
analysis into correspondence, analogy, or association. 
More than once in my youth, before I had acquaintance 
enough with men to generalize from any association of 
faces with character revealed in action, I recognized and 
described correctly the character expressed in a face. 
Self-conceit, falsehood, different forms of licentiousness, 
grasping avarice, disregard of moral law, contempt for 
human rights,— these, and other sins, and various marked 
virtues, have, at different times, been pointed out by me 
in a stranger’s face; and inquiry has shown that they 
notably existed in the stranger’s character. This was not 
accident, neither is this gift peculiar to me. I know men 
who possess it in a much higher degree than I. Every 
man of any spiritual discernment recognizes the moral ex- 
pression of the human face, and is drawn, attracted, or re- 
pelled, driven off by it. It is even one of the necessities 
of social life that men should have a fair degree of this 
power to see their neighbors’ characters in their faces. 
Without it, the difficulties of commercial and social inter- 
course would be vastly increased. 

We have mentioned the expressiveness of tone, but the 
expressiveness of a musical composition contains some- 
thing in addition even more remarkable. Indeed, the ex- 
pression of the meadow lark and of the bobolink does not 
lie altogether in the quality of their tones. It depends 
partly upon the rhythm. The lark’s dismal drawl is con- 
trasted with the exceedingly quick and sportive play of 
the bobolink’s gushing melody. The one seems self- 
restrained, the other self-abandoned. All these contrasts 
are still more observable in human compositions. The 
variety of human voices, the greater variety of orchestral 


132 POSTULATES: OF REVELATION 


instruments, the various voicings of the same kind of 
instrument,— these are, as it were, an increase of the dif- 
ference between the voices of the two birds. The differ- 
ence of rhythm, also, is vastly greater: it extends beyond 
one or two phrases to the rhythm of a whole composition, 
balancing phrases against phrases, theme against theme, 
part against part. 

Other elements in human music are almost altogether 
wanting in the music of nature,—namely, harmony, 
progression of chords, modulations from key to key. 
These add immensely to the power of expression, so 
that, in human art, music becomes a natural language of 
the affections, capable of giving utterance to emotions 
with a delicacy and with a force, with a precision and 
with a breadth and misty vagueness, unapproachable in 
any conventional language. Consider, for example, the 
closing chorus of Beethoven’s “Christ on the Mount of 
Olives.” In the original words, which he set to the 
music, the angels are represented as singing the praises 
of Christ for his sacrifice of himself upon the cross, and 
as saying, “Worlds are singing thanks and honor to the 
exalted Son of God.” I once took a friend to hear this 
music, when it was sung simply to the words, “ Praise 
Jehovah.” My friend (a clergyman of whose truthfulness 
there cannot be a doubt) had never so much as heard of 
the oratorio, and had a very slight knowledge of music; 
in fact, almost none. But, after hearing this chorus, he 
said: “ Those words cannot be a correct translation of the 
original, for which Beethoven wrote that music. It is 
very far from being a hymn of simple praise to God. It is 
Christian music. It has a grandeur exceeding all the con- 
ceptions of even Hebrew prophets. It is re-echoed from 


BEAUTY 133 


land to land, and from world to world, till the universe 
rings with the song. And that song is thanksgiving for 
the forgiveness of sin,— forgiveness announced or pro- 
cured through a mediator. You may depend upon it, the 
music was written for a hymn of praise to Christ, or a 
hymn of thanksgiving for the reconciliation effected by 
@hrist:? 

The highest end of beauty is this moral end. The 
mere outward charm is nothing in comparison with this 
inward power. A _ beautiful object is one which gives 
pleasure in its mere perception, independent of considera- 
tions of its object or utility. Nevertheless, in order to 
give pleasure, it must permit the unimpeded exercise of 
our perceptive power. Evidently, it will not do this in 
the highest degree, unless all the perceptive powers are 
gratified simultaneously. An example of this highest 
degree of beauty is found when, on the human face, we 
see not only the symmetry of form, the proportion of light 
and shade, the delicate play of color satisfying the intel- 
lectual nature in its passion for unity, but when we also 
see the expression of a noble character at peace with 
itself and with the world, and consecrating itself in a sub- 
lime unity of purpose to the service of its Creator. An- 
other example of the highest beauty is found when, in a 
piece of music, we find not only the unity of form, the 
charm of progression, the proportionate balance of chords, 
— both in voices and instruments,— the proportionate in- 
crease and diminution of force delighting the ear and the 
intellect, but also feel that the moral condition of the com- 
poser at the time of the composition was healthy, and that 
he was pouring out sentiments worthy of being uttered 
through the divinest of the arts. It is in such recogni- 


134 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tion of the expression of spiritual and moral truth through 
beauty that an unimpeded exercise of energy is allowed 
to all of our highest moral and religious faculties, thus 
giving to us the highest enjoyment, and thus justifying us 
in saying that this beauty of expression is the crown and 
glory of beauty. 

From these brief remarks upon a theme which would 
bear indefinite expansion, it will be seen how vast the 
field whence the harvest of religious truth may be gath- 
ered. Confining ourselves, for the present, to the eye and 
the ear, as organs of sense,— their intricate mechanism in 
the human head, and their modifications for the use of 
lower creatures, are, in the first place, an absolute demon- 
stration of the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator. 
All attempts to show that such complicated and wise adap. 
tations of means to ends arose without design are abso- 
lutely futile: they owe their present popularity simply to 
what may be called jugglers’ tricks in logic, to a skilful 
playing with words, to puzzle the moral and intellectual 
perception, as sleight of hand may puzzle the eye of the 
Spectator. 

The impressions made upon these delicate and compli- 
cated machines, the eye and ear, by the minute tremors 
of the air in sound, and by incomparably more minute 
tremors of the ether in light, are a\ natural language of 
signs and tokens, whereby we are informed of the pres- 
ence and position of objects, capable of being also exam- 
ined by the other senses. This language of sight and 
sound is the principal means by which we are instructed 
concerning the truths embodied in the external world. 
Nor do we see any flaw in the argument which would 
show that this language of vision and hearing is as real a 


& 


BEAUTY 135 


communication with God, as the communication through 
ordinary speech is with our fellow-men. Joseph Henry’s 
conclusion is sound,—that all the vast fabric of physical 
science is merely a transcription into human speech of 
the answers which God has given, through this language 
of vision and hearing, to the patient questioning of intel- 
ligent scientific explorers. These impressions on the eye 
and ear are mere symbols; in themselves they bear no 
resemblance whatever to the physical properties which are 
revealed through them. The physical properties, thus 
announced, are afterward verified, through handling and 
experimentation, by touch and by muscular mechanical 
action. They are trustworthy symbols: they do not de- 
ceive or mislead one who patiently learns to interpret them. 

But this language, described by Berkeley and alluded to 
by Henry, is prose. Through the same organs we re- 
ceive also poetry. In other words, God speaks not only 
to the head, but to the heart. The language of vision and 
of hearing expresses not only thought, but feeling: it 
awakens the deepest sentiments. This is admitted even 
by those who refuse to take the further step of admitting 
that this utterance of sentiment through language proves 
the existence of a Divine love in Him who utters it. Yet 
it is manifest that as the symmetry, the order, and the 
adaptations of the universe prove its Author to be an all- 
wise Creator, so the presence of beauty in all things, the 
power of expression, and the power of receiving and in- 
terpreting the expression of nature, prove its Author to 
be all-loving. All attempts to explain expression in the 
manner of either Erasmus Darwin, or of his grandson, 
seem to me to be fallacious. I have been familiar with 
the writings of Erasmus Darwin from earliest boyhood, 


136 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


and was, in my youth, captivated with them. But as my 
knowledge of nature increased, and especially as I in- 
vestigated by numerous actual experiments questions of 
zesthetics, I saw more and more clearly that there is no 
just explanation of the adaptation of the universe to the 
highest as well as the lowest needs of man, except in the 
assumption of the infinite love of God. By the power of 
spontaneity, of freedom, we attend to the evidences of his 
being, or close our eyes to them; we dwell upon the 
cogency of the lines of consilient inductions which lead 
to the acknowledgment of him; or we dwell upon diffi- 
culties and objections, and upon the fact that probability 
is not certainty. Even our intellectual convictions are 
thus partially under the control of the will. It is an 
error to suppose that, because the mind decides according 
to the evidence before it, its decisions are necessary. 
The evidence is not before it, until it has been admitted; 
the witnesses may testify clearly, and yet the judge arbi- 
trarily rule out the testimony. We may put ourselves, if 
we choose, in the position of one who doubts everything, 
doubts even whether he doubts, doubts whether he exists 
to doubt. But if we admit our own existence, and our 
own ability to know something, and if we are willing to 
be led wherever the preponderance of evidence inclines, I 
do not see why the beauty, the melody, and harmony of 
the world, and the exquisite adaptation of the eye and the 
ear and the heart of man to enjoy it all, do not make 
the existence and the loving kindness of an Infinite 
Father as certain to us as any truth whatever can be. 

The universe is not merely an embodiment of geometri- 
cal and algebraical ideas, a philosophical collection of 
diagrams, an illustration myriad-fold of the adaptation of 


BEAUTY 17 


means to ends; but it is also a poem, formed of unnum- 
bered other poems, woven together, and yet having exqui- 
site unity; it is a concert of loveliest music; it is a drama 
of fascinating interest. Examine it in every way we will, 
and with the exercise of every power, we constantly come 
back to this conclusion: that it is constituted throughout 
exactly as if it sprang from the will of an Infinite Being 
of unbounded power and love, knowing all the secrets of 
the human heart, and addressing himself to the supply of 
every normal desire. 

While studying the space relations of the universe, the 
intellect predominates over the heart; but, in apprehend- 
ing time relations, there is a stronger appeal to the heart 
than to the head. In the beauty of geometric figure and 
of manifest rhythm, the understanding is appealed to as 
directly as the affections; and it finds a pleasure in re- 
sponding to the appeal. But in color, in heat, in tones, 
in harmonies, the direct appeal is to the feeling; and the 
intellect may, at first, be almost wholly unmoved. Thus, 
also, in the beauty of expression, even when the expres- 
sion is through sensible rhythm and figure, it enters di- 
rectly into the heart. Poetry has been defined to be the 
language of passion. Its rhythmic form is not essential : 
its essence lies in the depth of right feeling, which always 
leads toward figurative expression and rhythmic movement. 
Color and tone are the poetry of the natural language of 
vision and hearing. They consist in symmetrical motions 
of such minute extent that, singly, they are not recog- 
nized by sense. Thus, they provoke no intellectual anal- 
ysis; they keep the head cool; and all their force is 
expended in warming the heart. So far as human knowl- 
edge goes, neither color nor tone is essential to either 
vegetable or animal life; they are not even essential to 


138 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


intellectual life. A man may attain to high scholarship, 
he may show marvellous powers of mind, without any 
conscious thought concerning color or tone. But, when 
his feelings are aroused, their first native utterance is 
through the tones of his voice. It may be from this fact 
that the art of expression through music has been grad- 
ually developed. The first expressions of pleasure in a 
young child are usually called forth either by tones or by 
colors. The art of the cultivated man, using color as a 
means of expression, does not rise so high above nature 
as it does in music; yet it goes far enough to make the 
successful painter, who adds the charm of coloring to the 
forms of his drawing, to be held in perpetual remem- 
brance and honor. 

These effects of musical tone and of color are not nec- 
essary to the bodily nor to the intellectual life, but they 
would certainly be greatly missed by the heart in the 
moral life. It is difficult for the imagination to paint 
what the condition of human hearts might be in a world 
without color and without tone. Laura Bridgman and 
Oliver Caswell have made famous the condition of human 
beings with good natural endowments entirely deprived 
both of hearing and of sight. We know that they have 
warm hearts and lively affections. But we must remem- 
ber that these are isolated cases. They were in a world 
of people having full possession of sight and hearing. 
They were cared for, educated, tenderly caressed by 
those who saw and heard, and who had inherited the 
culture of ages derived from sights and sounds. The 
value of the eye and of the ear to the human race is not 
to be thus negatively measured by the loss incurred by a 
few blind and deaf individuals, who still share with others 
the contents of books and the fruits of civilization. 


BEAUTY 139 


Neither is the happiness of the color-blind nor of those 
who have no ear for music any evidence of the slight 
value of tone and color to the race. The color-blind and 
the musically obtuse are still sharers in the general life 
of the race and of the nation,—sharers, perhaps, in the 
highest forms of cultivation. They are thus, although 
perhaps unconscious of the origin of their pleasure, sharers 
in all the happiness which flows to the race directly from 
musical tones in nature and from the charm of coloring. 
Through these the heart of God speaks directly to the 
heart of man. This evidence of the universal Father’s 
love is not susceptible of reduction to intellectual proposi- 
tions or syllogistic arguments; but it is appreciated and 
felt, and gives reasonable and solid assurance to the hearts 
of his loving children. When a mother draws her child to 
her, enfolds it in her arms, and silently presses it to her 
bosom, the child has no proof of its mother’s love suscepti- 
ble of logical formulation ; but it has proof stronger than 
any syllogism. Thus in the intercourse of the human soul 
with God. I cannot prove his love by any process of 
argument, the affections are not within the pale of logical 
deduction ; but, nevertheless, I know his love with a 
knowledge transcending all merely intellectual belief. I 
am bathed in that love from day to day, from hour to 
hour. It manifests itself to me inall the beauty of natural 
forms, in all the tenderness of natural coloring on the 
earth or in the sky; it utters itself in all the natural 
sounds, also; it breathes itself into my heart with the 
affection of my dearest beloved friends. And when my 
heart rises into thanksgiving, and throws itself with un- 
reserved confidence upon his infinite goodness and mercy, 
that love floods my whole being with light and joy. 


IX. 
THE TESTIMONY: OP GONSCIENGE 


WE have shown that space and time are in themselves 
impotent over matter and over mind, utterly powerless to 
control either sensuous perception or sensuous imagina- 
tion. From this it follows that sensuous perceptions and 
sensuous imagination, when they conform to order in 
space or order in time, capable of intellectual recognition, 
and perhaps of intellectual analysis, and of description in 
general intellectual propositions, show that intellect con- 
trolled the causes of those perceptions and imaginations. 
This is the morphological argument, drawn from the con- 
formity of the external universe (whether in its atomic, 
molecular, crystalline, cosmical, or organic forms) to laws 
of space and time, and showing that that universe is cre- 
ated and upheld by infinite wisdom. 

The teleological argument is somewhat similar. The 
perception of the adaptation of means to ends,— for exam- 
ple, the nature and proportion of the elements in their 
adaptation to the needs of animals and of man; the cos- 
mical arrangement of our planet in such manner as to 
suit human needs; the myriad-fold adaptation of plants 
to their surroundings, and the delicate, intricate contriv- 
ances for their propagation; the creation by the plants of 
storehouses filled with coal and petroleum for our use; 
the multiplied mechanical contrivances for carrying on 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE I4l 


the functions of animal life in the myriad forms of higher 
and lower animals,—the perception of all this not only 
shows that the soul which perceives it has in itself the 
conscious power to adapt means to secure ends, the secret 
consciousness of causal energy, which can bend things to 
its will: it also shows that the whole universe is guided 
by a universal reason to the accomplishment of harmoni- 
ous designs, to the fulfilment of universal plans. The 
sunbeam is as powerless in itself to decompose carbonic 
acid and to deposit the carbon in a future coal-bed as 
space is powerless to form a cubic crystal, as time is 
powerless to determine the periods of the long rhythmic 
successions of vegetable and animal life. The succession 
of organic life is rhythmic. It returns at intervals to the 
potentiality of the ovum and of the ovule. Therein lies a 
secret beyond the power of space or time or mechanic 
force. Potentiality is intellectual. The ovum or ovule 
has no measurable force. Its power is infinitesimal, com- 
pared with the chemical forces of even one molecule of 
carbonic dioxide or of water. But behind it or within it 
lies a power comparable to nothing known to us except 
to the spontaneous choice, the free action, of our own will. 
This infinitesimal power is omnipotent to guide the di- 
vision of the molecules, when the tremors of the solar 
ray have thrown the atoms, for an instant, to some point 
of unstable equilibrium. At such moments, the ovule 
directs the parts in different ways. The oxygen is per- 
haps returned to the air; while the carbon is laid in place, 
according to a predetermined plan, to build an organic 
form similar to that of the parent’s plan. Somewhere, 
that plan of the parent form exists in its entirety. It 
potentially exists, else it would not become, at regular 


142 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


periods of a generation, an actuality. A potential plan — 
proved, by its becoming actual, to have existed potentially 
— existed in a mind,—a mind which designed and accom- 
plished the design. This is the teleological argument, 
which, like the morphological, builds partly upon a priori, 
partly upon inductive, reasoning. It derives its irresist- 
ible potency from the consilience of so many strong lines 
of induction to the one conclusion,— the being and attri- 
butes of God. 

Thirdly, the perception of beauty, whether in things 
sensible or in things intelligible, shows, not only that the 
soul which perceives it possesses the third great attribute 
of spirit,—the power of feeling: it also shows that the 
Creator of the universe and of the soul is beneficent. 
He has created man to be a partaker in his own divine 
joys. Finite symmetry speaks to the head, infinitesimal 
symmetry to the heart. To the Creator there may be 
nothing great and nothing small. Even to our human 
reason, the mere scale on which a thing is built is unim- 
portant, in comparison with the intellectual skill of its 
design and the beauty of its form. “Time and space are 
great only with reference to the faculties of the beings 
which note them.” It is in the power of God alone to 
determine what shall be great, and what small, to us. 
That is, he alone can establish our scale, and give us our 
unit. He has done so, not only by fixing the size of our 
planet, the average size of our bodies, and their average 
strength, the maximum velocity attainable in our atmos- 
phere, and the like, but also by limiting our power of per- 
ception. There is a minimum z7szbile. Even the most 
wonderful microscope has limits to its magnifying power, 
the most wonderful telescope limits to its ability to pene- 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 143 


trate space. We cannot set the limits to human ability 
with precision; but we know that it has limits in every 
one of our senses and faculties. 

Within the limits of direct observation, those phenomena 
which are distinctly seen to be modes of motion make 
their primary appeal to the mind, and only secondarily 
affect the feelings. But those phenomena which are not 
recognized by sense as modes of motion — for example, 
odors, flavors, temperatures, colors, and tones — appeal 
primarily to feeling only, secondarily to thought. They 
give us sensuous pleasure, they make up the comforts of 
life ; and, when odors, flavors, temperatures, have put the 
body at ease, then color and tone delight the mind, and 
afford a vehicle for the expression of spiritual feeling. 
They are a vehicle of spiritual expression. God, in them 
and through them, gives us higher views of spiritual 
beauty, and calls us more lovingly and earnestly to attain 
for ourselves the beauty of holiness. 

We do not, by this last expression, mean to indorse the 
sentimental theory of ethics. But, in the discussion of 
ethics, it is emphatically true that of many different and 
divergent theories each may have in it a portion of truth. 
When we attempt to examine this fourth field, and con- 
sider the question of the nature of right and wrong, which 
the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures assume that men 
can, at least in large degree, determine for themselves, we 
shall find that it has analogies to each of the preceding 
fields. The unity of human nature and of the universe is 
so great that Emerson’s Sphinx declares,— 


‘Who telleth one of my meanings 
Is master of all I am.” 


144 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Thus, Tennyson also declares that, if he could but 
understend wholly the little weed in the cranny of the 
wall, he would also know what God and man is. When 
we attempt to probe the question of right and of duty, 
when we ask ourselves what is the foundation of obliga- 
tion, we perceive that in the spiritual world, in the rela- 
tions of men looked at on the side of the heart, there is 
order or disorder; that moral good consists in a conform- 
ity to this divine order in the moral universe. Herein is 
the analogy between ethics in the spiritual, and morphol- 
ogy in the external world. Thus regarded, the question 
of right is an intellectual question. In considering it, 
the intellect sees that the moral order of the spiritual 
world was, like the physical order of the material uni- 
verse, established by unerring wisdom, by an infinite 
mind, foreseeing all consequences from the beginning and 
arranging all things with perfect skill. Here also is the 
analogy between ethics and the teleological view of ex- 
ternal nature. The spiritual faculties, the tastes, pas- 
sions, and sentiments of man, are such as to bring about 
the historical ends designed by God. This view leads to 
the sciences of political economy, of social statics and dy- 
namics, of politics and statesmanship, in the best senses. 
In all these sciences, the assumptions are secretly made, 
which the Hebrew prophets from the beginning openly 
declared, that the Judge of all the earth will do right; that 
the course of nations and of individuals is subject to his 
control, and that he rules them to attain his own final 
ends. 

It must also be acknowledged that there is a beauty in 
holiness, just as there is a beauty in figures, tones, or colors. 
When the mind takes in the perception of a rounded, sym- 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 145 


metrical character, standing in just and harmonious rela- 
tions with other men, and in a reverent, filial, trusting, 
obedient attitude toward God, it certainly has a quiet 
delight in the perception. This sense of moral beauty is 
more satisfying and profound than can be given by any 
other object whatever, whether in the realm of nature, art, 
or fiction. Yet that sense of beauty, awakened by the 
perception of a holy character, is certainly a very different 
thing from the sense of our own obligation to be holy. 
That this sense of obligation also exists in the human 
heart is the testimony of all human languages, in all ages 
and in all countries. 

The attempt is often made to account for this sense of 
obligation without admitting the reality of obligation. For 
example, it is said that the experience of men early teaches 
them that certain courses of action are destructive to the 
interests of the community. The community, then, inter- 
dicts such action; and generations of children brought up 
under such interdiction presently acquire a sense of obliga- 
tion to refrain. In proof that this is the source of the 
sense of obligation, we are referred to the familiar fact that 
persons brought up to regard innocent things as wicked 
feel as much horror of conscience in transgressing the 
fancied obligation as they would from real sin. This argu- 
ment is part of the general system of empirical philosophy, 
which refers everything to custom and to experience. 
But custom and experience can only develop and bring 
out into clear light and actual consciousness ideas and 
perceptions which already lay potentially in the mind and 
in the objects of perception. Otherwise, custom and ex- 
perience might make a Shakspere from an ass’s colt, a 
Newton from the spawn of an oyster. Matter and motion 


146 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


bring out into distinct consciousness our perceptions of 
Space and time; but experience in matter and motion 
never could give the judgment of necessity in the relations 
of space and time. Experience never could have sug- 
gested to Mathesis the consideration of a fourth dimen- 
sion in space, and of a duration in time neither before nor 
after a given epoch. Custom and experience may guide 
or misguide us in deciding what is right and what is 
wrong ; but they could not create in the soul that pecul- 
lar sense of obligation, which looks not at the act ap- 
proved or disapproved, but at the motive, the purpose, 
which is justified or condemned. 

Still, it may be asked on what grounds we condemn or 
justify the motive, if it be not upon the grounds of a 
broader utility. When we say that a certain motive is to 
be condemned, do we mean by it, in the last analysis, any- 
thing more than this: that we perceive that, in the indul- 
gence of such motives, there would come harm in the long 
run? When we say that a motive is good, do we mean by 
it anything further than this,— that the indulgence of that 
motive would, in the end, lead to good? 

The answer is manifest. Expediency and utility, taken 
in this broadest sense, may be, and are, exceedingly useful 
tests of moral axioms. But there are cases to which we 
cannot apply the test,— cases, also, in which dependence 
on that test would be exceedingly dangerous. The ethi- 
cal instincts of an individual are, very often, too weak to 
withstand the sophistry of the individual mind. Yet the 
individual mind, almost universally, trusts its own intel- 
lectual conclusions. If, therefore, a man saw no possible 
harm, and great actual benefit, as likely to result from an 
act, he would, under such a utilitarian theory of morals, 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 147 


be very apt to disregard utterly the ethical judgment of 
the community, and even to regard his own scruples as 
weaknesses. 

A great many examples might be brought forward 
to illustrate this point. Let one suffice. Innumerable 
breaches of trust, embezzlement of funds, and forgeries of 
notes, have been committed by persons who intended no 
injury or injustice to any one. They thought that they 
were certain of success in their speculation, and that they 
would replace the funds, or take up the notes, and never 
be detected ; that they would do no one else any harm, 
and yet enrich themselves. Now, according to the theory 
of morals which we are considering, the sin of these men 
seems to have been only that of acting when they were 
not absolutely sure. If they had had actual certainty of 
their gains and of escaping detection, if they had never let 
any living soul know of their action, then they would have 
done neither present nor prospective harm, and on this 
false theory would have been justified in their acts. Yet 
every honest heart revolts against such a decision. 
Every honest heart feels that such a man would have lost 
his integrity. If he did not feel ashamed of himself and 
feel guilty in God’s presence, he ought to feel ashamed, he 
ought to lose his self-respect. At the basis of this moral 
judgment of honest, honorable men there lies a peculiar 
idea of moral right,— not capable of being resolved into 
utility or into reasonableness, unless utility and reasona- 
bleness be redefined for the express purpose of making the 
words include the right. It must be conceded that every 
manifestation of spiritual power is made through the 
medium of motion in some form. It does not follow that 
every manifestation of spiritual power is to be explained 


148 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


by geometry and algebra. However perfectly the science 
of acoustics and musical statics may analyze the movements 
of the air and of the ear, in an oratorio or symphony, they 
can give no account whatever of the sensations felt by a 
musical ear that hears it and a sympathetic heart that feels 
it. No analysis of geometrical forms and rhythmical pulses 
in the waves of light can interpret the “meaning in the 
live repose of the valley behind the mill.” That speaks 
out of the heart of God to the heart of man,—secret 
chambers which lie not in space nor time, but in spirit. 
And just as the sensation in consciousness is different 
from and of a higher order than any motion in the body by 
which the sensation is produced, just as the sentiment or 
expression of a work of art is different from and of a higher 
order than the mere sensation or sensuous pleasure which 
it gives, so the judgment of right and wrong is different 
from and higher than any judgment of individual or general 
happiness or utility, than any judgment of reasonableness 
or unreasonableness, folly or wisdom. It bears a strong 
analogy to these latter judgments; and, by a strained use 
of the words “utility” and “reasonableness,” either of them 
may be made to cover right and duty. But it is unwise to 
put this strain upon those words. The effect will inevi- 
tably be, not to enlarge and dignify the words, but to de- 
grade our conception of right by dragging it down to the 
ordinary meaning of usefulness and expediency, or to the 
ordinary meaning of wisdom and prudence. The unso- 
phisticated, pure heart feels that there is a heaven-wide 
difference between a virtuous man, whose heart is not in- 
clined to evil, but is set on what is right, and a prudent 
man, who is afraid to do wrong lest discovery bring dis- 
grace and punishment. Let us not, by any abuse of lan- 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE T49 


guage, do anything toward confusing that difference in 
any mind. 

Jouffroy, in his Introduction to Ethics, briefly reviews 
the principal attempts which have been made to analyze 
the idea of right. Before so doing, he gives a brief sketch 
of his own views, in the form of a summary of the facts of 
consciousness. This summary, as I recall it, was some- 
what of the following character: An infant acts from 
sporadic impulses, almost unconsciously or automatically. 
As he grows older, he controls these impulses, and more 
consciously directs them to gain his ends; but those ends 
are, at first, simply the fulfilment of chance impulses. 
Presently, difficulties arise in the way of his action. He 
concentrates and bends his energies to overcome them. 
He deliberately chooses a course, and presses on to follow 
it. This course, however, is at first short, leading only 
over and through the particular difficulty which arouses 
him to action. But, by this means, he is awakened to a 
true self-consciousness. He learns that he need not be 
and ought not to be driftwood, the sport of winds and 
waves. He begins to feel that he ought to seize the helm, 
choose his own course, consult the heavens, and stead- 
fastly force his vessel to use wind and wave, to accom- 
plish the voyage upon which he has determined. At this 
time, the question arises, What should be the end and 
aim of his course? 

Then there dawns upon his mind the idea of right: 
there arises in his heart the feeling of obligation, of duty. 
The question next arises, What is right? We may put 
this answer still into the same figurative form in which 
we have put this question. The youth, asking what 
course to take, examines his vessel, his books, his charts, 


I50 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


and his instruments, and in this search finds that he is 
sailing under sealed orders. These are to be opened, and 
read with care: they define his duty. The vessel is not 
his own: he has not gone out for his own pleasure, on a 
yachting excursion. The master of the vessel, to whom 
he owes everything, has given him these sealed orders, 
which he must open, consult, and obey. In other words, 
the duty of a created being is to fulfil the object of his 
creation, to perform his destined duties and attain his 
destined end. And the destined uses and ends of a cre- 
ated being can be discovered by a study of its powers and 
capabilities. 

Thus, we are brought back, in the consideration of duty, 
as in all other excursions of the reason, to the one central 
Being out of whose power and wisdom and love all thing's 
flow. Weare bound to fulfil the duties, to aim at the end, 
for which God made us. We can discover what those 
duties are, what that high end is, only by a careful study 
of our own nature, our powers and capabilities. In the 
study of this nature, we must, of course, study not simply 
our individual self, in whom some unusual defect may 
occur, but we must study the human race. In this study 
of human nature, we find revealed to us the existence of a 
profound moral order, embracing all the spiritual universe. 
Right consists in conformity to that universal moral 
order. Thus, right, like truth, like beauty, like the good, 
cannot be known in its absolute perfection by finite man, 
but only by the infinite God. Thus, the Apostle Paul 
says that he was conscious of no sin; yet that did not 
prove him innocent, since the only true judge of innocence 
is the Lord. Right is that which is right in his sight. 

It is frequently objected that the will of God cannot be 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE ISI 


thus made the ultimate foundation of duty, since that 
would imply that he might have commanded sin to be 
holy. There is, however, no such implication in the doc- 
trine. When we approach these highest and deepest 
questions, we should remember that logic-chopping and 
quibbling are as much out of place as puns or jokes would 
be. Our conception of God, to which every line of induc- 
tive reasoning leads us, forbids the possibility of his mak- 
ing us to do aught else than that which is right. As his 
unerring wisdom and infinite knowledge forever prevent 
our even imagining that he could attempt aught that is 
contradictory to mathematical laws, or aught that would 
be absurd, so they prevent the possibility of our imagining 
that he could create moral beings to live in immoral rela- 
tions. He has made us subject to the laws of moral har- 
mony. He has given us that limited freedom by which 
alone we could learn to understand what moral order is; 
and what a sublime inheritance he offers to those who will 
voluntarily conform to that order! Wedo not doubt that, 
in the Divine mind, reasonableness, utility, and right are 
one with infinite beauty and truth. But, to the human 
mind, that unity is seen only by faith, not by sight. To 
the human mind, that which is rational and reasonable is 
so constantly disparate from that which is useful that one 
cannot be a safe guide to the other. In like manner, that 
which is right seems, to a human mind, so frequently dis- 
tinct from that which is profitable that any attempt to live 
by a consideration of either alone would be foolish. We 
are often at a loss to know which of two courses would 
be most profitable, when both of them appear to be per- 
fectly right; that is, we are perplexed to know which of 
two courses duty demands, and cannot see that either of 


152 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


them would be more useful than the other. On the other 
hand, we sometimes have a strong sentiment, a moral con- 
viction, that certain courses of action or moods of feeling 
are wrong, although we cannot see any immediate or pro- 
spective evil to arisefrom them. Nay, we sometimes thus 
condemn, in our secret conscience, things in which we 
could not distinctly see anything but pleasure and ad- 
vantage were they not condemned by the moral sense. 

This ethical sense is as original and peculiar a gift as 
any of the faculties of our nature. It frequently takes the 
place of reason for us, in the same manner that hunger and 
thirst take the place of reason. The appetite takes the 
place of reason by making us eat and drink at such times 
and in such quantities as will sustain the bodily strength. 
Smell and taste take the place of reason for us by leading 
us to a choice of wholesome foods. Throughout our nat- 
ure, powers of sensation, feeling, and impulse, lead us, in 
an automatic way, to do that which we might forget or 
neglect to do, if we were left wholly to the guidance of our 
own conscious thought. This is the continual action of 
faculties that lie too deep for consciousness, implanted and 
guided by the unerring and eternal wisdom and love of the 
Creator. In a perfectly analogous manner, the ethical 
sense, the deep feeling of obligation, of duty, of the neces- 
sity for obeying God, is a perpetual witness to his kind- 
ness, his condescension to his children. The highest fruits 
and highest benefits of life can be enjoyed only through a 
voluntary, spontaneous conformity to the divine moral 
order of the spiritual universe. The sense of obligation, 
of duty, is our perpetual reminder of this vital truth. 
It is, as the very structure of many languages shows that 
it has been always felt to be, the testimony of God himself 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 1$3 


to us, the perpetual witness of the spirit of God to our 
spirits that we are the sons of God, and bound to live as 
becomes our high origin. Conscience is, as the word im- 
plies, a mutual knowledge of the sinner and of the one 
sinned against. A conscience, to have real peace, must 
be at peace with God, and rejoice in communion with 
him. 

But the restless reason, remote from the feelings, even 
from the feeling of obligation, may still ask, Wherein is the 
necessity for conformity to the moral order of the universe, 
any more than for conformity to the physical order? 
Why, she asks, should you insist upon an “I ought” and 
“I must” in regard to morals, any more than in regard 
to any other department of human thought,— science, for 
example, or fine art? The first answer obviously is that 
we make this difference because there is a difference. We 
make a difference between colors and odors because there 
is a difference. Colors affect the eye, odors the sense of 
smell. The judgments on the two cannot be compared 
with each other. In like manner, an error of judgment is 
lamented as a mistake; an error of choice in matters of 
fine art is a mere defect of taste; but an error of choice 
in matters of duty is a sin. That is human nature: it 
feels concerning moral actions a peculiar kind of approval 
or condemnation. It feels that we ought or we ought 
not. T’hus, moral necessity seems to us stronger than 
logical necessity, just as logical necessity is ee: than 
physical. 

The inquiry perpetually arises as to the consequences 
of disregarding this feeling of moral necessity. The dis- 
regard of physical necessities leads to an injury of mate- 
rial property or of the human frame. A disregard of 


154 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


logical necessities leads to intellectual errors, which may 
or may not draw us into the further folly of disregarding 
physical necessity. These are the natural sanctions at- 
tached to the physical and intellectual laws of nature. 
They may, figuratively, be called the punishments for the 
violation of such law. But what are the consequences of 
disregarding moral obligation? If this obligation be 
higher than either of the other two, one might suppose 
that the consequences of disregarding it will be more 
serious. In other departments of our nature, conformity 
to natural law brings a benefit, neglect of that law brings 
suffering, or, if not suffering, at least a crippling of power 
and loss of enjoyment. This is the origin of a large pro- 
portion of the evils and miseries of the world, they arise 
from'a disregard and infraction of manifest natural law. 
Ignorance of this law excuses no man, because plain and 
repeated reminders of its existence and its penalties are 
constantly given in the course of providence and by the 
endowments of the human frame. It must be so also in 
regard to moral law. In the moral sense and in religious 
convictions there is a constant assertion of the supremacy 
of moral and religious considerations. No judgment, said 
Dr. Channing, can be just or wise which is not founded 
upon a conviction of the paramount worth and importance 
of duty. Reason herself must acknowledge that the high- 
est of all laws is the law which binds us to obey law. 
And, if all lower laws have their sanctions annexed, so 
that their infraction brings misery, it is certainly so, also, 
with the highest law. The disregard and neglect of 
moral and religious obligation is a violation of the condi- 
tions on which alone the highest life is possible. It must 
therefore be followed by the most terrible loss, by the 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 155 


deepest death. This may be the reason why our ever 
kind Creator implanted in us this peculiar, deep feeling of 
the obligation of moral duty. That which is right is the 
most useful of utilities, the best of all good, the highest 
reason for all that is reasonable. The right is, therefore, 
to be sought with every power of mind and heart and 
soul. Conformity to the right is eternal joy. It is com- 
munion with the All-holy and the All-good. On the 
other hand, that which is wrong is more to be shunned 
than all error or loss or suffering. Sin is worse than 
idiocy, it is more unreasonable than folly, it is worse than 
suicide, it is more than death. It is a destruction of the 
highest life and highest powers. 

There is another distinction, in our feelings concerning 
right and wrong, which does not seem to us to be well ex- 
plained by any utilitarian, or rational, or sentimental the- 
ory of morals. When aman makes an intellectual error, 
and brings upon himself loss or suffering, or when a man 
shows himself destitute of appreciation for art and in- 
capable of the enjoyment of beauty, we simply pity him. 
We think that the course of nature gives him sufficient 
punishment. We have not the slightest desire to add to 
it. On the other hand, it is a universal feeling, when a 
man does wrong, not only to condemn it, but to be indig- 
nant at it, and to feel a desire to punish the wrong-doer. 
This is a universal feeling, unless it be that a few of the 
highest saints may find their indignation at sin swallowed 
up in their profound pity for the sinner. But we all feel 
how natural was that exclamation of Dr. Franklin (to 
which we have before alluded), when he was told an in- 
stance of treasonable treachery, and cried that if there 
was no hell ready for such a traitor one ought to be made, 


156 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


The existence of this universal wish, to add punishment 
to the natural effect of sin, is a problem for reason to 
explain. 

The solution of this problem must go deep into the 
nature of sin and of punishment. When we talk of 
natural law, we refer to that interlinked series of causes 
and effects through which the actualities of existence are 
manifested in sensible forms. In the external universe, 
the natural laws are the conditions of existence and man- 
ifestation. The violation of those laws simply interrupts 
or defeats the possibilities of life, or of its special manifes- 
tations which were dependent on those violated condi- 
tions. In all this, we naturally feel that we have no part. 
The universe is the embodiment of one grand thought of 
its Creator. In any true work of art, a central idea takes 
possession, so to speak, of the artistic soul, and necessi- 
tates by its own nature, manifesting itself to his clear 
imagination, every detail of the drama, or the symphony, 
or the picture. Thus, in the universe, which is the arche- 
type of all art and the formula of all sciences, one infi- 
nitely complex, yet absolutely simple, thought, conceived 
before eternity in the Eternal Mind, involves all the 
minute details; and those details are not to be criticised 
by our feeble and limited understanding of them. 

In the moral sphere, it is totally different. There, the 
idea of cause enters in its true sense as an uncaused 
cause. The series of causes and effects in the universe 
embraces only causes in a secondary sense of that word. 
In the primal sense of the word “cause,” physical causes 
are no causes. They are prior effects. Reason can accept 
nothing as truly a cause except that which itself is un- 
caused. There alone it can rest. Thus, in tracing back 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE 157 


physical causes, we come finally to the act of God; and 
there we rest in the ultimate cause. Precisely in the same 
manner, in the consideration of human actions, we come 
toasimple “I chose”; to a Pilate’s “What I have written 
I have written,” behind which we cannot always go. 
These simple volitions of men choosing good and evil are 
therefore only partly involved in the courses of secondary 
cause and effect. The reasons which flow from the natural 
effect of our actions are not deemed by men sufficient, as 
affording motives to right choice, either by way of reward 
or by way of punishment. The conception of moral obli- 
gation, of virtue, and of sin, involves the conception of 
good or ill desert ; and human experience shows that men 
do not always get their deserts. We remember hearing 
men, fifty years ago, maintain that it was an arraignment 
of the Divine justice to say this. From a peculiar inter- 
pretation of the New Testament, they denied the existence 
of any suffering beyond the moment of death, and there- 
fore felt impelled by their sense of the justice of God to 
affirm earnestly that the amount of happiness and misery 
in this life is in exact proportion to a man’s virtue or sin. 
But this affirmation is so contrary to the general experience 
of mankind that this peculiar form of religious doctrine is 
no longer pressed upon us. All believers in the immortal- 
ity of man now admit that his condition in the world to 
come must depend partly upon his character in the present 
life. The history of speculation upon this subject shows 
how ineradicable in the human mind is the conviction that 
sin deserves, and must receive, a recompense of evil; how 
ineradicable, also, the conviction that it does not, invari- 
ably, receive that recompense from the natural course of 
events in this life. 


158 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


It is, however, still affirmed by some that the recom- 
pense for sin arises solely from the inevitable working of 
universal and invariable laws, extending into the life be- 
yond the grave. The attempted demonstration of Strauss 
is applied to this question. God being infinite, he says, 
can act only simultaneously throughout all space, and syn- 
chronously through eternity. We can, however, admit no 
such conclusion concerning the Infinite First Cause. Be- 
cause he is the First Cause, uncaused, he is removed from 
any such supposed necessity, and is free to do whatever is 
reasonable, wise, holy, and beneficent. Even our own 
will, feeble as it is, being still free, is partly removed from 
the domination of secondary causes. We therefore feel the 
need of arbitrary reward and punishment to help its feeble- 
ness. All parental government, all school discipline, all 
civil and criminal jurisprudence, proceeds upon this as- 
sumption, and goes upon this basis. We may frequently 
err, and do frequently err, in our attempt to supplement 
natural laws; but we do not on that account decline to 
make the effort to supplement them. We cannot shake 
off the duty of government. We cannot admit the doc- 
trine that the natural consequences of sin are a sufficient 
punishment for sin. We cannot admit it without intro- 
ducing confusion and discord into the family, and misery 
and anarchy into the state. How, then, can we doubt 
that, when the whole history of man is known in this life 
and in that which is to come, we shall find a system of 
divine rewards and punishments, independent of and sup- 
plementary to the natural effects of secondary causes? 
This is that which renders the forgiveness of sin possible, 
and thus justifies our Lord Jesus in teaching us to pray, 
“Forgive our sins, for even we forgive those who trespass 


THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE I59 


against us.” If the punishment for sin consisted wholly 
in the natural effects of universal and invariable law, no 
forgiveness would be possible. Neither parents nor friends 
could forgive their children, nor could God forgive us. 

We are, of course, speaking of absolute forgiveness. 
In a relative sense of the word, there is a provision for 
forgiveness in the physiological constitution of man. 
Poison and disease may be completely eradicated from 
the system. Opportunity is given for repentance until 
the transgression has reached a certain amount. The 
moral obligation upon man requires absolute chastity, 
absolute temperance; but this obligation cannot be proved 
by observation from experience. It requires an appeal to 
first principles in spiritual things, above the reach of any 
finite experience. And the fact that minor sins against 
temperance and chastity, if early repented of and thor- 
oughly, completely, forsaken, may leave no visible trace 
of mischief on the bodily frame, confirms the metaphysic 
of the Lord’s Prayer. It gives a natural ground for hope 
that the moral condemnation which visits the slightest 
infraction of these laws and weighs heavily against the 
character, even though the body be unharmed, may also 
be removed by sincere shame and true repentance. But 
our sense of justice, demanding punishment beyond the 
natural consequence of guilt, expressing itself in penal 
regulations in the family, school, church, and state, is a 
strong, an unanswerable argument for attributing justice 
to God; and for believing that, although the natural 
course of events may not punish guilt, a Divine course of 
action reaching beyond the domain of nature will infallibly 
bring a just retribution, unless a sincere shame and true 
repentance first bring the transgressor to seek forgiveness 
at the foot of the cross. 


X. 
THE INFINITE IN MAN. 


In preceding lectures, we have briefly sketched a few of 
the numerous lines of argument confirming the great pri- 
mal truth of the being and attributes of God. Starting 
from the primary facts of knowledge, we show that things 
which appear, only appear; and that the realities behind 
the appearances are time and space and conscious mind. 
These alone we absolutely know to exist. The force which 
causes motion may proceed from conscious will. Origi- 
nally, it must have proceeded from conscious will. Our 
sense of necessity is not satisfied when we simply attrib- 
ute motion to some preceding motion. The clear inward 
vision, infinitely sharper than any microscope and reach- 
ing infinitely further than the telescope, perceives that 
there must necessarily be a cause of motion. It is, there- 
fore, not satisfied by being shown a means. The physical 
philosopher, starting on a search for causes, pursues his 
inquiries for thousands of years, builds up great sciences, 
and fills libraries with the results of his labors. But, 
among all those results, he has not reached a cause: 
he has only shown means and instruments and methods 
by which the results are accomplished. The original 
cause, equally with the final purpose, lies outside of 
what are now recognized as the limits of purely physical 
inquiry. 


THE INFINITE IN MAN IOI 


Physical science seeks only to discover the consecutive 
order of the phenomena. For her purposes, it is sufficient 
to consider an immediately preceding phenomenon as the 
cause of the succeeding. For all that physical science 
cares, the universe may be considered self-caused, as 
being in its totality, at each instant, an effect of its state 
in the preceding instant, and the cause of its state in the 
succeeding instant. Such a view of cause will not, how- 
ever, satisfy the demand of reason. It implies a continual 
change in the total state of the universe, and gives no 
hint of a cause of that change. In finite things, this de- 
mand for a cause is only satisfied by reaching the self- 
determined choice of a free agent. In regard to physical 
changes, the discovery of what is called the physical cause 
is only the discovery of a means, exciting a new curiosity 
to trace the cause further back. It is only when we 
come to the determination or choice of a moral agent that 
we find any rest in this search for cause. We are led, in 
like manner, to attribute the original state of the universe, 
its original emergence from potentiality into actuality, to 
the free choice of an infinite, sovereign Will. No other 
cause can be assigned for the perpetual series of changes 
in the totality of its conditions. To this conclusion, we 
have found various lines of inductive reasoning to give 
strong confirmation. The universe embodies and _ illus- 
trates myriad laws of symmetry in space, and of rhythm 
in time. This is almost in itself a demonstration that 
nature sprang from a mind capable of seeing symmetry 
and rhythm. We have shown that this result is further 
strengthened by the discovery that certain forms of sym- 
metry in space and of rhythm in time, embodied in nature, 
are capable of being expressed in one and the same alge- 


162 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


braic formula, as though one mind had planned both em- 
bodiments of the one algebraic law. | 

But the world is not only thus the embodiment of 
mathematical ideas: it is a vastly complicated system of 
means and ends,— so much so that teleological language 
is the simplest mode of expressing many of the facts of 
nature. 

Even further than this, the assumption that everything 
in nature has been accomplished with the utmost economy 
of force and the greatest attainment of purposes becomes, 
in the hands of the mathematician, a fertile means of dis- 
covering laws of nature. For example, many facts of 
acoustics, thermotics, and optics; many, also, in the 
higher branches of vegetable and animal physiology,— 
have been or may be deduced from the simple assumption 
of the infinite wisdom of God, and the corollary that he 
would waste no force. 

Still further, we have shown that the world is the em- 
bodiment of beauty, of love, and of justice. We have, 
however, confessed that in these higher departments the 
arguments are less capable of being put into logical 
formule. Those who discuss questions of natural theol- 
ogy are always inclined to seek intellectual forms of argu- 
ment, and have, therefore, not usually felt so keenly the 
strength of these arguments from higher sentiments. 
The world, however, in general, does not endeavor to 
formulate its convictions in language. Its clearest, strong- 
est, and most assured beliefs are frequently incapable of 
being either put into definite words or defined by syllogis- 
tic argument. The conclusions of the heart are, in gen- 
eral, less liable to error than those of the head. The 
number of those who are indifferent to the moral expres- 


THE INFINITE IN MAN 163 


sion of Nature is not so large as the number of those who 
are incapable of analyzing her thought. 

All lines of inductive reasoning, however, fail of leading 
absolutely to the infinite. The universe, as we see it and 
know it by observation, is not infinite. Our demand for a 
first cause of the visible universe does not, therefore, ask 
for an absolutely infinite cause. Much less do lines of in- 
duction, which take in but a few facts of observation, lead 
to absolutely infinite results. It has therefore been ob- 
jected that theological reasoning can only render probable 
the existence of a God, and cannot prove the existence of 
God in the highest sense. Even some of the strongest 
theists have made this concession. Dr. Samuel Clarke 
admits that, in his demonstration of the being of God, he 
only proves the existence of a wise God, not of an infinitely 
wise and infinitely powerful being. Immanuel Kant, in 
his “Critique of the Pure Reason,” states very strongly the 
same view of the impossibility of demonstrating infinite 
attributes in the Creator of a finite universe. Yet the 
idea of causation shows that the universe had its origin in 
an eternal, self-existing being. This, says Clarke, is one 
of the first and most natural conclusions which any man 
who thinks at all can form, All things cannot possibly 
have arisen out of nothing, neither can they have de- 
pended upon one another in an endless succession. In 
either case, the universe would be without a cause. The 
question is, however, What are the attributes of the 
original cause? This question, it is usually thought, can 
be answered only by induction from the universe itself. 

Here, then, we appear to leave demonstration. We 
rest upon the evidence of finite facts: therefore, our con- 
clusions cannot reach infinity. Let us, however, remem- 


164 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


ber that an inadequate cause is not a cause. There must 
be some proportion between the cause and the effect. 
The effect, the universe, embraces intelligent moral 
beings: the cause of the universe, therefore, cannot be 
devoid of intelligence and of moral attributes. John 
Stuart Mill has seen fit to put an answer to this theistic 
argument into the absurd form of saying that pepper in 
the broth does not prove pepper in the cook. The reply 
is so obvious that Mill can hardly have failed to see it; 
namely, that pepper in the broth does prove that the cook 
had pepper. We are under a logical necessity of assum- 
ing every being to be either conscious or unconscious. 
A being neither conscious nor unconscious is as im- 
possible to our imagination as a period of time neither 
past nor future. We are also under a logical necessity of 
regarding that which is conscious as of higher rank than 
that which is unconscious. We are under the equal 
necessity of agreeing with Anselm in making a cause of 
higher rank than the effect, of admitting that the depend- 
ent must depend upon something greater than itself. We 
cannot imagine or admit that an unconscious cause can 
produce conscious being. If we allow Mr. Mill's postu- 
late, that a cause need not be similar to its effect, we must 
also claim the postulate that a cause must be sufficient for 
its effect. Matter and mechanical force are not a suffi- 
cient cause for the production of even a finite personality, 
while an infinite person is a sufficient cause for the whole 
universe of matter and motion. 

It may appear, however, that the great gap to be 
bridged is the interval between a personal, self-existent 
cause of the universe and the absolutely infinite God, per- 
fect in every attribute. All our arguments seem to run 


THE INFINITE IN MAN 165 


from the fact of existence, on the chain of causation, to a 
self-existent being; from the fact of finite, personal, moral 
agents up to the personality of that self-existent cause. 
But it may be said that the difficult problem is, How from 
such a God, proved by reasoning from finite facts, we are 
to rise to the conception of an ideal, infinitely perfect 
being. Clarke does it simply in the manner of Anselm, 
from the higher rank of a cause, as compared with an 
effect. ‘The self-existent being must of necessity, being 
the original of all things, contain in itself the sum and 
highest degree of all the perfections of all things.” 
Kant’s ground is very similar. “The present world,” he 
Says, “opens to us so immense a theatre of diversity, 
order, fitness, and beauty, whether we seek after them in 
the infinite of space or in its infinitesimal divisions, that, 
even in the knowledge which our weak reason has been 
able to attain, language lacks power to express the multi- 
tude and greatness of its wonders, so that our judgment 
of the whole terminates in a speechless, and therefore the 
more eloquent, astonishment. We everywhere behold a 
chain of effects and causes, ends and means, regular begin- 
nings and endings. Nothing has come of itself into its 
present state, but always indicates another thing further 
back as its cause, rendering precisely the same inquiry 
into causes necessary, so that the great universe would 
sink into non-existence did we not admit something self- 
existent, original, independent, external to this vast series 
of changes, the cause of its origin. How great are we to 
represent this primal cause of the universe? We are not 
acquainted with the whole of the universe, still less can 
we compare the actual with the possible. But why should 
we not, since we require an external being superior to all 


166 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


the actual as a cause of the actual, suppose that being to 
be superior also to everything possible?... It would be 
comfortless, and also futile, to attempt to show any lack 
of authority for such a supposition.” 

We perceive, therefore, that both the great Englishman 
and the greater German metaphysician make the same 
leap across the chasm. They admit that demonstration 
only goes so far as to prove the existence of one original, 
self-existent cause. They claim that induction goes so 
far as to show overwhelming evidence that the cause of 
the universe is a wise intelligence, whose will is the cause 
of the phenomena which his wisdom planned. Then, by 
a single leap, they spring to the conclusion that this wise 
power is the one original, self-existent Being, and that his 
attributes are all absolutely infinite, that he is infinite in 
his perfections. Mr. Herbert Spencer admits the first 
conclusion. He says, indeed, that the existence of one 
original, self-existent cause is the most certain of all 
truths; not exceeded in certainty by our knowledge of our 
own existence, and equally thrust upon our attention at 
every turn of our conscious life. Further than this he at 
first refused to go, and would not admit that induction 
shows the Creator of the world to be wise or good; much 
less, that it shows him to be infinitely wise and infinitely 
good. 

Yet the induction for the wisdom and even for the good- 
ness of God is immeasurably strong. It is impossible for 
fancy to imagine a universe moving by law, fulfilling or 
carrying into realization an ideal plan, and showing any 
more numerous and satisfactory proofs of the intelligent 
foresight and perfect skill of its creator than the actual 
universe shows. All actuality, all realization, known to 


THE INFINITE IN MAN 167 


us, 1S in space and time, and therefore amenable to mathe- 
matical law. So far, therefore, as the purpose and func. 
tion of actually existing things are known to us, we may 
test the foresight ‘and skill of the Creator by subjecting 
the creation to mathematical analysis. We may not be 
sufficient masters of analysis to apply it to every actual 
case in the creation; but, so far as we can apply it, it is 
an absolute test. If we have no power to see and test 
truth at all, then it is idle to argue either against or for 
belief in God. To be thoroughly agnostic, a man should 
be thoroughly sceptical; and a thorough sceptic, being 
able to disprove nothing, ought to hold all things equally 
true or equally false. He should therefore be just as sure 
of spiritual realities as he is of the existence of the every- 
day world about him. But if, on the other hand, we have 
any power to see and test truth, then mathematical con- 
clusions have absolute certainty, and mathematical tests 
are absolute tests, 

We cannot, however, bring external things into abso- 
lute conformity to mathematical law, neither do we find 
in nature any absolute conformity. If nature did, in any 
instance, conform exactly to law, we could not recognize 
it, because we have no means of absolute accuracy in the 
measurement of either space or time. Vet we men bring 
external things into so close a conformity to mathematical 
law as to give absolute certainty of our intent; and, in 
nature, we find a conformity so close as to give absolute 
certainty to our interpretation. For example, the laws of 
planetary motion and the laws of crystalline forms are 
held, in the mind of the man of science, to be absolutely 
certain. Yet no observed position of the heavenly bodies 
and no observed forms of crystals ever yet agreed exactly 


168 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


with those laws. Now, in applying mathematical law as 
a test of the wisdom and foresight of the Creator, there 
are numerous instances in which the law of the created 
form is demonstrated to be the perfect and only perfect 
law, although the actual individual form may never be in 
absolute conformity with that law. It may, however, be 
said that these numerous instances do not absolutely 
prove that it is so in every instance. They demonstrate 
the wisdom and foresight of the Creator; but they do not 
demonstrate the perfection of that wisdom, much less do 
they give a demonstration of the perfection of his moral 
attributes. How, then, isit that we presume, with Kant, 
to make the leap, and rush to the conclusion that the 
original, self-existent cause is not only absolutely eternal 
in his being, but absolutely infinite in every conceivable 
and inconceivable perfection ? 

To answer this question, let us look a little more closely 
at the meaning of infinity; and let us begin with the 
simplest infinite,— the infinite of space. The word “infi- 
nite” is negative in its form, meaning without bounds; but 
its signification is positive. It does not so much refer to 
the absence of limits as to the surpassing of all limits. 
A line of infinite length is not simply a line without ends 
nor a line to which you can assign no ends. It is a line 
which actually and actively passes beyond all assignable 
and all unassignable limits. When you attempt, in imagi- 
nation, to trace such a line,—to pursue, for example, a 
hyperbolic comet into space,— you recoil, not merely with 
a sense of the impossibility of your coming to an end. 
That merely negative perception could never generate 
the sense of the sublime. You recoil at the perception 
of the possibility of going on forever. Let us suppose 


i et Mi to a a oh ar Mant a al aa NR a 


THE INFINITE IN MAN 169 


your motion to be with accelerating velocity forever. 
You can still go on forever. There will be, indeed, no 
end. But that is not the peculiarity. The peculiarity is 
that your motion would in that case be always beginning, 
and that you will have at the end of eternity as far to go 
as you had at the beginning, or would have had, had you 
begun an eternity sooner. 

Let us illustrate, further, by the conception of an end- 
less but not infinite motion in space. Suppose a locomo- 
tive to be running at the rate of a mile a minute. It is 
evident that she will run two miles in two minutes, But 
now suppose her to be of no weight, to be a mere point 
in motion. Suppose, further, that, in the midst of this 
run at the rate of a mile a minute, we may interpose as 
many instantaneous stops as we please. The detention 
is to operate instantaneously without slackening ; and, on 
release, the speed of a mile a minute is to be instantane- 
ously resumed. All this is of course physically impos- 
sible, but our locomotive is now imaginary and without 
momentum. Let, then, these detentions be as short as 
we please,—say, for example, one second, or any fixed 
minute fraction of a second. We have the choice of say- 
ing when she shall stop. Let us choose that she should 
stop a thousandth part of a second at the end of the first 
mile, an equal time at the end of the next half-mile, then 
at a quarter-mile, and so on, running each time half as far, 
but having each detention the one-thousandth part of a 
second, Then she would keep moving to all eternity, and 
could never reach the end of the second mile. There 
would be no end to her motion, but it would be far from 
infinite. It would be all enclosed within two miles. The 
motion in this case would be endless, both in space and 


170 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


in time; but it would be limited in space, and infinite only 
in duration. 

The idea of infinity, therefore, is not negative, but posi- 
tive. It is not a merely fanciful idea, derived from such 
examples of spectre locomotives and of hyperbolic comets 
which may never have existed. It is an idea forced upon 
every human being who has risen to conscious thought 
concerning his origin and ‘his destiny. The child and the 
savage as well as the philosopher wrestle with it, and are 
vanquished by it. But that wrestling reveals to them 
their strength. Like the fabled riddle of the Boeotian 
sphinx, it reveals to the questioner himself. The mind 
which can grapple with and wrestle with the problem of 
the infinite, even though it be baffled by it, rises a victor, 
in so far as this,— that it learns to recognize the element 
of infinity in itself. A man’s power to reason out results 
which he cannot imagine — to see, for example, that, how- 
ever far he goes in one direction, he is still as exactly 
in the centre of infinite space as before —conclusively 
proves that he is not the mere product of a few pounds 
avoirdupois of flesh and blood and bones. It is absolutely 
impossible either to imagine or to reason out the possi- 
bility of a few kilograms of chemicals rising to such con- 
clusions concerning infinite space. In the language of 
Emerson, man is himself a “clothed eternity.” The 
“currents of universal being flow through him.” “He is 
part or particle of God.” He sees the infinite, because he 
is partaker in the infinite. 

The vision of the infinite is by no means confined to 
space and time. Why should we ask to explain our sud- 
den leap, from the induction of the finite to the infinite, 
in regard to spiritual attributes? Since we clearly see 


ee a ee en ee ee ee 


ee ee ee 


THE INFINITE IN MAN I7I 


the infinite in space and time, what hinders our seeing 
the infinite in spirit? The bodily senses take cognizance 
only of finite extensions and finite durations, but the 
mental vision sweeps beyond the universe and through 
the eternities. In like manner, the sense of effort in 
attention, the consciousness of volition in producing mo- 
tion, the conscious resistance to pressure, give instances 
only of finite measures of force. But long and patient in- 
terrogation of Nature, voluminous records of her answers, 
and patient scrutiny and analysis of those records 
have revealed to man the omnipresence of the force 
of gravity and of the elasticity and compression of the 
ether. These forces are, in their amount, as much be- 
yond the power of Arabic figures wielded by reason as 
they are beyond our imagination. But it is not by mere 
induction from even these tremendous forces that we 
attain the idea of absolute omnipotence. The human 
mind sprang to that conception, as it did to the concep- 
tion of infinite space, from its own eagle vision. We bow 
before the omnipotence of God, which we recognize be- 
cause we have been made in his image. In a certain 
sense, we have an omnipotence in ourselves in the very 
ability to apprehend that such omnipotence exists. The 
idea is its own voucher, and asks for no inductive proof 
of its own certainty. The long lines of induction which 
are sketched in essays upon natural theology are not 
proofs—they are simply confirmations and illustrations 
—of the truth to which the mind attains by a single 
glance toward God. So far from being necessary in order 
to convince us of the being and attributes of God, they 
are, in that direction, of scarce any value. But, on the 
other hand, they are invaluable in leading us to meditate 


172 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


upon, to expand, and to render clear our apprehension of, 
his being and attributes. We attain the conception that 
God is almighty by a single leap; but we give expansion, 
definiteness, vividness, to our conception by a study of 
the movements of the universe. 

Thus, also, with the higher ideas of love and justice and 
holiness: they lie above the sphere of induction and of 
deduction; but they are not inaccessible to the mind of 
man, since he is created in the image of the All-loving, 
All-good, All-holy. We do not ask nor need the aid of 
inductive reasoning to prove the reality and the infinite 
value of these Divine attributes. But just as we need 
extended bodies and rhythmical movements to be our 
guides in bringing us to a knowledge of space and time 
and in leading us to a recognition of and study of their re- 
lations, and just as we need physical obstacles to our own 
movements, and need arithmetical calculations of the 
greatness of the mechanical powers of the universe, to 
lead us to the contemplation of the Eternal and Almighty, 
so we need the discipline of family relationship and social 
intercourse, the rapture of conjugal love, the peace and 
blessedness of philanthropy, the difficulties of human 
government, and the study of jurisprudence and states- 
manship and social science, to lead us to the contempla- 
tion of that moral perfection, that unfathomable love and 
justice, which guides and governs the universe. In this 
moral realm, it is precisely as it is in regard to space and 
time and mechanical force: induction does not lead to, 
but only toward, the infinite. Induction leads us simply 
to look in the right direction ; and then, by direct vision, 
we see the infinite as clearly, incontrovertibly, unmis- 
takably, as we can see the finite. 


THE INFINITE IN MAN 143 


The mind cannot be satisfied without the perception of 
the infinities of space and time, and of an original, self- 
existent cause of all things, The heart cannot be satisfied 
without an infinite, absolute justice, without an eternal, 
infinite pity, without an almighty protector for injured in- 
nocence and an inflexible avenger for insolent tyranny, 
cruelty, and heartless wrong-doing. In other words, the 
heart will not be satisfied without God. The intellect sees 
that this unappeasable longing of the heart was implanted 
there by the Creator. Thus, these heavenly affections 
themselves become the strongest witness of the reality of 
the things for which they long. 

It is not unreasonable, then, for Kant and Dr. Samuel 
Clarke to assume that we poor, finite creatures do not 
construct in our own imagination any higher God, any 
more potent, original, self-existent cause, or one endowed 
with higher attributes, than are found in the real Cause of 
the universe. There may be a great deal of pride and of 
self-conceit in the human heart; but, in a sane mind, it 
cannot go to the length of asserting that mortal man is 
better or wiser than the original Builder of the universe, 
or that he is even capable of conceiving one better. Even 
the agnostic and the atheist indignantly repel the charge 
that they think themselves capable of improving the con- 
stitution of the world. The pessimist himself would have 
to think more than twice before he could suggest any im- 
provement in the laws of nature. 


‘* All is well and wisely put”’; 
and there is nothing that can reasonably be said against 


the doctrine that the soul of man, having in itself a cer- 
tain infinite power of laying hold of infinity, has a direct 


174 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


vision not only of the infinite nature of space and time, 
but of the infinite character of intellect, the possibility of 
absolute knowledge,— nay, of the existence of an infinite 
Mind governing the universe. The soul of man has, also, 
a direct vision of the existence of a universal, absolute 
justice, holiness, and benevolence, among the attributes of 


the infinite God. 


XI. 
REVATIVIDY ; AND REALLY. 


Sir WitiiamM Hamitrton, of Edinburgh, was unques- 
tionably one of the most learned and one of the most 
acute Englishmen of the last generation; and his philo- 
sophical writings are worthy of the most attentive study. 
You will not, therefore, I trust, consider me as under- 
valuing him and his labors if I point out to you a palpable 
fallacy in one of his arguments, Berkeley, who preceded 
Hamilton by more than a century, was a man of less 
erudition, but of greater genius. Berkeley demonstrated 
in a beautiful manner— what experiment afterward con- 
firmed and illustrated —that the sense of sight, alone and 
unaided,does not give the idea of space. Even the sight 
of motion would not give the idea of space in three dimen- 
sions. For this full idea of space we need the testimony 
of the consciousness of muscular movements in all direc- 
tions. So far Berkeley was unquestionably right. But 
from that point his arguments and deductions became 
less satisfactory, and some of them have been generally 
rejected. Hamilton not only rejected Berkeley’s conclu- 
sions, but rejected his well-established premises. Hamil- 
ton himself was, I judge, peculiarly deficient in the ability 
to see space. He spoke repeatedly with contempt of 
geometry, the science of space; and he affirmed that 
touch and motion could give no idea of shape. Shut a 


176 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


man up in a perfectly dark room for hours, he said, and, 
let him feel about as he may, he cannot form any idea 
of the shape of the room or of any object in it that is 
too large for him to span. Not content with this absurd- 
ity, he goes on to argue that the idea of space is derived 
from sight, as is shown by the fact that imagined space 
is always imagined as either light or dark. But he caps 
the climax of absurdity by saying that even a man born 
blind, who, according to his theory, ought to have no 
conception of space at all, must, if he can imagine space, 
imagine it dark. 

When I first read this, I laughed outright, and said to 
the class of young people who were reading with me, 
Do you not see that a man born blind can have no 
more imagination of darkness than of light? When 
Samson had his eyes put out, in mature age, he could 
sing, “All dark, amid the blaze of noon.” But the man 
born blind is not in a world of darkness: he is in a world 
as free from darkness as from light,—a world of sound 
and temperature and motion, of odors and flavors, of 
roughness and smoothness, of weight and friction, press- 
ure and resistance to pressure, but not in a world visible 
or invisible. The darkness and the light are both alike 
to him: they lie for him in the abyss of potentiality; and 
it is not in the power of his will or of his imagination to 
evoke them. Sir William Hamilton of the nineteenth 
century here falls immeasurably below the young George 
Berkeley of the seventeenth. 

A few weeks afterward I met a friend blind from 
birth, in whom the power of seeing space is strongly 
developed, and said to him: “I want to put you a prob- 
lem. Draw a straight line of infinite length.” ‘“ Well,” 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 177 


said he, “I have done it.” “How did you draw it?” 
“Straight, and infinitely long.” But, upon my pressing 
him for the manner of the imagination, I found that he 
had conceived a thread stretched, absolutely stretched, 
and imagined himself gliding along, with the end of his 
forefinger feeling the thread, and finding it without kinks, 
without sag, and without end. His imagination of space 
was not an imagination of the visible or of the invisible, 
but of the tangible. At other times testing him, I have 
found him in his imagination clucking, and listening to 
the echoes from the form which I described to him, 
his imagination thus interposing the audible and inaudi- 
ble between his genuine space conception and his realiza- 
tion of form by touch. 

It might be inferred from this that his conception of 
space and mine are entirely different. My imagination 
of space is, as Hamilton described it, wholly visual. I 
see, as it were, with the outward eye: I make a guasz 
picture, or drawing, or visible model of forms in space; 
and, if a model, imagine myself looking at it on every 
side. None of this enters into his imagination, which, 
on the contrary, is built up entirely of things that do 
not enter at all into mine,— imagined sensations of his 
finger-tips, or of his ears,as he feels or clucks at the 
figure. 

From this comparison certain men are fond of drawing, 
with great positiveness, the conclusion that neither my 
friend nor I have any real conception or knowledge of 
space as it is. We know it, they tell us, only as it ap- 
pears to us; and it appears entirely different to each of 
us,— to me as a something visible, and to him as a some- 
thing tangible or audible. There is nothing in common 


178 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


between his imagination of space and mine, and nothing 
in common between either of our imaginations and the 
reality. All that we know is our own sensations and our 
imagined sensations; and, as in this case my friend im- 
agines one kind of sensation,—touch or hearing,— 
while I imagine only another,— sight,— there is nothing 
in common in our imagination, and we neither of us have 
any real knowledge. This is a philosophy which has 
been put forward in all ages, and which threatens to be- 
come fashionable at the present day. But, before we 
adopt it, let us consider this special instance of my 
blind friend and myself a little further. He was born 
blind; nor have I been able by any cross-examination to 
discover that he ever had any further sense of vision than 
that in his early childhood there was a difference to him 
between bright sunlight and pitch darkness, but not a 
difference sufficient to be of the slightest use in finding 
his way toward a window, for example, or toward the 
shade in the heat of summer. Whatever dim remem- 
brance of the sensation of light he may have is totally 
disconnected with the sense of space. Now, we studied 
together four or five hours a day for six months, going 
through trigonometry and analytical geometry. He was 
just as apt to help me as I to help him. We studied 
together: I drew diagrams by the eye, he felt them with 
his finger-tips; and neither perceived in the other any 
different conception of the meaning of those diagrams, 
In our six months’ study together, making five or six 
hundred hours of close grappling together with problems 
of pure space, neither of us had recognized in the other 
any mental difference of grappling with those problems: 
we each of us felt that we had both thoroughly mastered 


f 5 
PO ee: ee Pee ee ee ee 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 179 


the elementary processes of analytical geometry, the 
science in which the simplest conjunction is made be- 
tween space and time. 

Now, I ask, How is it possible to conceive that, never- 
theless, his real conception of space is different from 
mine, and that neither of us had acquired any absolute 
knowledge of forms, of conic sections, and solids of revo- 
lution ? 

I have thus described the case of myself and my friend 
in our study of analytical geometry, in order to illustrate 
the futility of those objections to theological study which 
are frequently made in our own day, and which have, in- 
deed, been made from the beginning,— the objection that 
we cannot know anything as it is, but can only know it as 
it seems to us. This case shows, I think, the correctness 
of the answer which may at once be given, We only 
know a thing as it seems to us, as it is viewed by us; 
but what hinders it from being seen correctly by us, being 
viewed in its right light? My friend’s imagination or 
picture of a form in space is entirely different from 
mine. Neither of them is really a picture of space at all: 
each is a picture of possible sensations. Yet beneath 
our false pictures of the visible to me and of the tangible 
to him lies the eternal reality disclosed to the vision of 
Plato and to ours,—to the vision not of our imagination, 
but of our reason, the eternal reality on which not only 
Plato and his school built the wonderful intellectual tem- 
ple preserved for us in Apollonius, but on which the 
architecture, the engineering, the navigation, the com- 
merce, and the science of the nineteenth century stand 
as on an immovable foundation. 

The religious scepticism which would deny theological 


180 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


conclusions on the ground that we cannot attain real 
truth, but only attain to our view of truth,— to what seems 
true to us,— ought, if it would be logically consistent, to 
deny in like manner all scientific conclusions, and be as 
uncertain and ignorant of the laws of geometry and alge- 
bra, of matter and motion, as it professes to be in ontol- 
ogy and theology. 

I was recently reading -a laborious argument by an un- 
believer, endeavoring to prove that there is no religious 
knowledge possible, through the whole of which argument 
occurred at intervals the refrain, ‘“ Remember the color- 
blind.” The writer appeared to regard the existence of 
color-blindness a positive proof that no human beings see 
colors; and, if we cannot see colors, much less can we see 
spiritual realities. Wherefore, theology is a delusion. 

But what is the fact concerning color-blindness? Sim- 
ply this,—that on examining any large number of our 
European race we shall find two or three per cent. of 
those examined to be incapable of seeing one or more 
colors. That is the whole. But does negative testimony 
do anything toward disproving the existence of the color 
which the witnesses are unable to see? I see color, I dis- 
tinguish its myriad shades with perfect ease. The vast 
majority of my neighbors do the same. What gives the 
few who have imperfect sight the right to say that we are 
all under delusion? Is the positive testimony of twenty- 
nine men that they do see a color to be offset and de- 
stroyed by the negative testimony of the single thirtieth 
man that he doesn’t see it? 

But it is persistently urged that the case of the color- 
blind shows that colors are not what they seem. If they 
were real, all men not blind would see them, and see 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY I8i 


them alike. I answer, How do you know it? You are 
arguing from pure assumption. The color-blind are blind 
to some particular color, usually to red. Other things 
they see. But the existence of the red which they do not 
see is testified to not only by the testimony of thirty 
times as many who do see it, but is proved also by nu- 
merous physical experiments in both optics and chemistry. 

Similar freaks are observable in the other senses, and 
they have no more significance. The winter-cress is to 
most palates pungent, but to some it is intensely bitter. 
Some ears are delighted with harmony, and some appre- 
ciate melody, but not harmony; and some appreciate 
neither. Some ears are deaf to very shrill notes, others 
to very bass notes, others to all sounds. Does all this 
prove that there is no such thing as sound? There is 
no hearing of sound where there is no ear to hear, no 
perception of odors or flavors where there are no palate 
and fauces. But the vibration of the air runs on the 
same, whether heard or not; and the odors rise in the 
air and the flavors lurk in the food, whether eaten and 
smelled or not. The sensations in these cases do not 
resemble the physical causes of the sensations, and the 
unscientific man learns no more of acoustics from hearing 
a symphony than he does of optics and chromatics on 
seeing a landscape. What of it? 

I raise my eyes from my writing, and look down through 
the blossoming branches of a great elm, at the shipping in 
the harbor, the light-house on the breakwater, the fortifi- 
cations on the island, the wooded crests of the islands 
beyond, then at the blue Atlantic rolling under an ap- 
proaching thunder-cloud. It is, of course, true that the 
sensuous image of all this landscape is very unlike the 


182 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


realities. But is it not also true that, by the training of 
many years in the analysis of sensations and imaginations, 
I get from this view many actual relations? I can esti- 
mate correctly how much higher the attic window from 
which I look is than the water, and know how to verify 
the estimate. I know the number, size, and character of 
the vessels and of the fortifications and islands, their dis- 
tance from each other, and so on. It is all a knowledge 
of the relations of things to each other, and to my body 
and my capacity for muscular exertion: it is relative 
knowledge, but it is a knowledge of real relations. It is 
a real knowledge, valuable in a thousand ways; and yet 
it is a knowledge derived from this vision so totally unlike 
the things seen. 

The investigations of modern science, so far from dis- 
crediting the senses, or showing that they give no real 
knowledge, have shown that the content of sensation is 
vastly richer in information and truth than we supposed. 
‘More servants wait on man than he’ll take note of.” I 
once proved by a series of careful experiments that my 
touch was more delicate and my hearing more acute than 
those of a blind friend. My ear heard all and more than 
all which his heard, while we took our daily walks together 
during six months of intimacy. Yet I was a stranger to 
the meaning of the language which conveyed to him the 
most accurate and abundant information. The echo of 
our footsteps as we walked was heard by us both, but I 
learned almost nothing from it: it kept him informed of 
every object that we were passing with marvellous truth- 
fulness and fidelity. 

The art of music has been built up on sensation and 
feeling alone. It has been growing for thousands of 


\ 
SSE i 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 183 


years, and for the last hundred years with great rapidity. 
In certain respects there is a great diversity of judgment 
and feeling concerning it, even among those most conver- 
sant with it; while in other respects there are numerous 
points toward which the judgment of all musically in- 
clined people has been coming to a more and more perfect 
unity. But science in the nineteenth century, investigat- 
ing carefully the minute motions of the air produced in 
music, has demonstrated that the musical growth of the 
eighteenth century was in strict accord with the laws of 
geometry, arithmetic, and algebra; that the musical com- 
positions which have become obsolete and rejected failed 
to give to the particles of air in their minute movements 
symmetrically, rhythmically beautiful orbits, while the 
style of musical composition which has been gaining 
steadily in public favor does give such orbits, 

In other words, the ears of music-loving people, decid- 
ing consciously only on what is beautiful and satisfying to 
their musical feeling, are also unconsciously deciding on 
algebraic and geometrical forms of beauty described by 
invisible particles of air in an invisible dance of the atoms. 
Not only were the musical sensations of music-lovers in 
the eighteenth century giving correct and valuable infor- 
mation concerning the nature and uses of music, but they 
were testifying beforehand, prophesying in an unknown 
tongue, now interpreted, of the discoveries of mathemati- 
clans and physicists in this nineteenth century. The 
inability of certain men to appreciate music does not 
destroy or even invalidate the testimony to the reality 
and value of modern physical studies of musical statics, 
given a century beforehand by the delicate musical sense 
of the great masters under whose inspiration and direc- 


184 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tion the wonderful art of musical composition grew and 
flourished. 

In like manner the physical sensation of color, in the 
eye of one capable of discriminating nicely the delicate 
shades which give the peculiar charm and glory to a 
really great colorist’s paintings, has been demonstrated by 
modern science to be much more than a mere subjective 
pleasure, a gentle titillation of the optic nerve. To take 
a single instance, so accurate and trustworthy is the in- 
formation given by these delicate shades of color that the 
whole success of one of the greatest of the mechanic arts 
of to-day, the manufacture of Bessemer steel, depends 
upon the chemical facts reported thus in the evanescent 
hues of the tongue of flame rising from the furnace. 
What weight should the color-blindness of two or three 
per cent. of the population of a village have in persuading 
the directors of a Bessemer steel company that the color 
of the flame affords no sure indication of the proper time 
to close the charge? Just as much exactly as the agnosti- 
cism and materialism of the materialistic school should 
have in persuading Christian preachers and Christian 
teachers that our religious sentiments and religious expe- 
riences have no value as evidences of theological truth. 

These gentlemen would fain persuade us, first, that they 
are the only truly scientific men,—as though such mathe- 
maticians as Peirce and Chauvenet and Sylvester and 
Sir William R. Hamilton, such physicists and chemists as 
Henry and Gibbs and Alexander and Cooke, such bota- 
nists as Torrey and Gray, such zodlogists as Agassiz and 
Jeffries Wyman, were not scientific men, simply because 
they were and are spiritual and devout; and, secondly, 
they would persuade us that they are the only truly philo- 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 185 


sophic men. Having more science than the leaders of 
science, they also know more of philosophy than the leaders 
of philosophy. They assure us that religion is a matter 
of feeling only, and that we must be content with feeling, 
and not attempt to attain any knowledge whatever on re- 
ligious themes. The attempt, they assure us, must be 
futile ; man cannot possibly rise above himself or know 
anything above himself. Man, they tell us, cannot possi- 
bly know anything except as it appears to him. He must 
infallibly judge everything by a human standard. His 
ideas of the universe and of its Author must inevitably be 
petty. As the ass takes an asinine and the goose an 
anserine view of the universe, so man takes a human view, 
and cannot possibly rise higher. 

Be it so. I can take only a human view of the uni- 
verse; but is it not a true view as far as it goes? Does 
not the ass with his asinine view know correctly that 
thistles suit his digestive powers, and the goose with her 
anserine view know correctly that she may launch herself 
safely on the lake? And man knows correctly, in his 
human view, that he may launch himself safely on the 
broad ocean of eternal infinite truth, and indulge forever 
in ever-increasing acquisition of knowledge,— absolute 
knowledge independent of the weakness of his sight. 
Man knows that he may gather not only figs and grapes 
for food, but that all things shall finally serve him. His 
intellectual appetite and assimilative power seizes upon 
and appropriates to himself every part of the universe ac- 
cessible to him. Comte, the great modern hierarch of 
the so-called Positive Philosophy, issued about fifty years 
ago his interdict, forbidding the human mind to go beyond 
the bounds of the solar system, and warning men that 


186 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


the fixed stars are beyond our ken. But scientific men 
laughed at his prohibition; and have gone on not only to 
measure the distances and the orbital revolutions of the 
stars, but even the rate of their direct approach or retro- 
gression from us; nay, they have run up on the slender 
rays of light to the stars and nebula, and subjected the 
very materials of their composition to chemical analysis. 

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, and neglected 
father of the best modern theories of evolution, in like 
manner nearly a century ago, forbade the human mind to 
attempt to find anything in music worthy of intellectual 
attention : music was a purely arbitrary art without any 
real foundation in nature. But, despite the pope of Lich- 
field and Derby, Beethoven went on, and composed his 
wonderful sonatas and symphonies, and wrote that mar- 
vellous chorus in the “Mount of Olives,” and Mendels- 
sohn his “ Elijah” and “St. Paul”; and the art of music 
stands higher and is more profoundly appreciated by the 
intellectual and cultivated world to-day than ever before. 
Those who have most thoroughly studied its powers and 
capabilities, so far from agreeing with Darwin’s view, 
would incline to take as reality the visions of the Apoca- 
lypse, which represent music as the language of redeemed 
and glorified spirits in the courts of heaven. 

Man can only take a human view, but the human view 
includes the vision of divine things. Man’s eye is not 
satisfied, says Emerson, without a horizon. He will not 
be satisfied if pent up within the brick walls and under 
the low ceiling of merely physical phenomena. His eye 
is not in healthful conditions to preserve its powers 
unless he can see a horizon, peer out into the infinite, 
and descry, even if it be but dimly, the fixed stars of 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 187 


eternal justice, absolute truth, infinite wisdom, unfathom- 
able love. The sensations of awe and reverence and obli- 
gation are richer in content of absolute knowledge than 
the mere sensations of color and tone. As the investiga- 
tions of physical science have shown that the sensations of 
color imply and prove the existence of a luminiferous 
ether, with its incredible tenuity and incredible elasticity, 
moving its atoms with almost infinite rapidity in almost 
infinitesimal orbits with perfect rhythmical and geomet- 
rical beauty, and this again implies the existence of 
specific forms of grosser matter to determine the limits 
of these orbits; as the investigations of physical science 
have shown that the sensations on hearing music prove 
the existence of somewhat similar motions in the atoms 
of the air; as esthetic criticism shows that the presence 
of certain colors and forms on the canvas, the succes- 
sion of certain melodies and harmonies in the musical 
score, prove the presence of certain emotions and pur- 
poses in the mind and soul of the painter and the com- 
poser,— so the analysis of the theologian demonstrates 
and with just as absolute certainty, that the sensations of 
awe and reverence and obligation, and similar religious 
and spiritual sentiments imply and prove the existence 
of spiritual and religious realities which can by proper 
care and attention be intellectually defined and presented 
to the mind, with a perfect certainty of their objective 
truth. 

The new-born babe exhibits, sometimes from the very 
moment of birth, a knowledge of the difference be- 
tween a human being and an inanimate thing. The 
warmest and softest pillow will not satisfy it: it must 
nestle on its mother’s breast. It has not formed any 


188 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


definite intellectual theory concerning consciousness and 
unconsciousness, sympathy and want of sympathy, or any 
other differences between a pillow and a bosom; but its 
little heart is wiser than its head, and a much safer guide. 
Men are but children of a larger growth. Men in general 
know the existence of their fellow-men with absolute 
certainty, as the baby knows the existence of its mother 
without ever having had a thought about it. The inborn 
sympathy of man with man, the attraction which draws 
us together, the native gregariousness, if I may so say, of 
our race, is a sub-intellectual (that is, an indistinctly 
recognized) ground of our ineradicable faith in each 
other’s existence, just as the bodily appetites and 
passions are an indistinctly recognized or sub-intellectual 
ground of faith in the existence of the proper objects of 
those appetites. | 

In like manner, and even more strongly, the sentiments 
of awe and reverence and obligation are an immovable 
ground of faith in the existence of the proper objects of 
those sentiments. And these sentiments demand some- 
thing more than unconscious force, unconscious law, con- 
sensus or harmony of the universe. If any man say, as 
some do, that the universal consensus of the physical har- 
monies of the universe is a sufficient object for his 
sentiments of awe and reverence and obligation, then I 
would respectfully say to him: Remember the case of the 
color-blind. To me, and I think to the great majority of 
spiritually-minded men, you seem like a man color-blind: 
you are blind to the highest conceptions of awe and rever- 
ence and obligation. These all imply an element of per- 
sonality: we cannot feel proper awe or reverence except 
for a person, nor obligation except to a person ; and there- 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY 189 


fore these sentiments, if they really exist in your heart, 
cannot be satisfied with the recognition of any other 
object than an Infinite Person. 

But we are immediately answered by a reference again 
to our human limitation. We are told that we can form 
no picture to ourselves of anything greater than a person, 
simply because we are ourselves persons. May there not 
be, asks Herbert Spencer, a mode of Being as much tran- 
scending conscious personality as that excels unconscious 
matter? Of course there may; and the religious thinker 
is more eager to admit it than the irreligious can be. The 
Hebrew Scriptures, with all the complaints of their de- 
scribing God as man, contain far more sublime asser- 
tions of the absolute inscrutability of God than can be 
found in any other literature. The Christian holds God 
to be absolutely perfect in every attribute and infinite in 
every power. There are no limitations to his personality, 
there is no likeness even in spiritual things whereto we 
can compare him. But we are told that this is admitting 
that we can know nothing about God: we must not there- 
fore ascribe personality to him, our conception of per- 
sonality is derived from ourselves; we cannot rise above 
ourselves, we cannot rise above the conception of a lim- 
ited personality. 

Very well, I will admit that we cannot ad imaginatione 
rise above the imagination of a limited personality ; but 
Christians do not pretend to imagine the personality of 
God. We believe devoutly in the doctrine of the Penta- 
teuch, which forbids us to attempt to form any image or 
similitude of God, and represents him as saying, Ye can- 
not see me, but ye can see by the evidence of my action 
where I am present. We can form no image of the con- 


IgO POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


sciousness of God, of his knowledge or his omnipotence, 
or his infinite goodness and holiness. But reason can far 
transcend imagination ; and reason demonstrates the exist- 
ence of these attributes in God, of which the imagination 
can form no picture, with which it can be satisfied as a 
likeness of the reality. 

How, then, it may be asked, can we have any affections 
toward him? If the imagination utterly fails to picture 
him, in what form can the heart lay hold of him? Are 
not the feelings always dependent upon what is perceived 
by the senses or upon what is imaged in the imagination ? 

I answer that the feelings, the affections, cannot lay 
hold of that of which the imagination presents absolutely 
no picture, or that of whose existence reason gives no 
proof. But the feelings can certainly be aroused to their 
most intense activity by a picture known to be purely im- 
aginary ; and in the like manner they can be kept in the 
state of sustained awe and trust and confidence by that of 
which reason assures them, even when imagination utterly 
fails to draw any picture of that in which the trust is 
placed. No intelligent Christian, even when his rhetoric 
had led him to speak otherwise, ever supposed himself 
capable of picturing in his mind the state of God’s mind; 
yet the most intelligent, learned, philosophic Christians 
have had a serene faith, like that of the humblest and most 
ignorant, in the everlasting love of the eternal Father who 
guides all things in infinite wisdom at the prompting of 
infinite love. 

That we cannot feel without either knowledge or imagi- 
nation is very true; but, on the other hand, it is equally 
true that we can feel, and feel deeply, when our knowledge 
goes very little further than knowing that the thing which 


RELATIVITY AND REALITY IOI 


excites the feeling exists, and when the imagination goes 
very little way toward picturing the cause of the emotion. 
Let a congregation hear upon the organ a solemn, earnest 
piece of music, and the majority of them will be deeply 
moved by it, and be brought into a similar state of feeling. 
Suppose it to be that grand toccata in F, by Sebastian 
Bach, which was afterward written out for an orchestra. 
The majority of those who hear it. will feel inspirited, 
strengthened, cheered, nerved up to action by it, even 
though they know nothing concerning music, and even 
though they form no imagination whatever concerning 
the origin or object of the composition,— perhaps fully as 
much moved as though they understood the laws of sound 
and of musical composition, or fancied to themselves that 
Bach was sounding a trumpet-call to rally the hosts of the 
church militant to the last great assault upon the citadels 
and strongholds of sin. And this fact of the congregation 
being thus moved is the strongest proof that the compo- 
sition came from the great composer when he felt inspired 
to utter a note of encouragement and noble cheer. We 
have a sort of direct communication from him in this fact. 
If the organist plays with spirit and feeling, we recognize 
in him an interpreter who understands his author, and 
reads him aloud to us with understanding and with the 
spirit. 

We understand and know but little of the divine Being ; 
but that little we do know, and it is enough to fill our 
minds and hearts full to overflowing. Our imagination 
can represent to us almost nothing even of the little that 
we know; but that faint and shadowy adumbration of this 
greatest of all realities is enough to arouse the deepest, 
holiest, most enduring, most controlling sentiments of 


Ig2 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


which we are capable. The reality and depth of religious 
emotions in many men, whose intellectual culture and 
own express language show that they form the human- 
ized picture of the divine Being, are unquestionable. 
Mathematicians and physicists, statesmen, philosophers, 
poets, the peers of any among the living or the dead, are 
still found clinging earnestly to the grand fundamental 
doctrines of the Christian religion. Their positive testi- 
mony certainly ought to outweigh the negative testimony 
of those who find no religious verities. 

When a man is in perplexity, doubt, trouble, and sor- 
row, or is tempted to do what he fears is wrong, if, then, 
instead of speculating and debating with himself, he casts 
himself boldly on the promise, Ask, and ye shall receive, 
and opens his heart and mind prayerfully to the influences 
of the Holy Spirit, he finds peace and light and strength 
come into his heart; and he cannot then doubt that God 
hears and answers prayer, he cannot then refrain from 
thanksgiving and praise. 


XII. 
THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION. 


I HAVE mentioned the fact that some of the most distin- 
guished agnostic and atheistic writers have not only ad- 
mitted, but vigorously insisted upon, the existence of a 
self-existent, ultimate Cause, or (I should prefer to say) 
First Cause of the universe. They admit that they believe, 
and must believe, in an antecedent cause of every effect, 
and of the universe as in its totality an effect. But after 
this admission they think they see two logical escapes 
from theism. The atheistic escape is to declare the uni- 
verse itself the self-existent cause of itself. The agnostic 
escape is to declare the First Cause utterly inscrutable, so 
that we can assign to it no attributes whatever. 

To declare that the universe is its own cause, that it is 
self-existent from eternity, is, as I have in a previous lect- 
ure shown, to forget the very nature of cause. What the 
mind demands in a cause is unity, but this atheistic solu- 
tion of the universe gives no approach toward unity. To 
run the universe back into a nebulous fire-mist is not to 
find any true unity; for that mist must contain all the 
present cosmos, in all its variety, potentially concealed. 
This beauty of arrangement could not come out of it 
unless it were first in it. And the potential multiplicity 
needs explication, and demands a cause as much as the 
actual. To assume the eternal self-existence of the uni- 


194 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


verse in motion, the eternal cause of its successive forms, 
is simply to refuse the demand of the intellect for a cause, 
and to refuse it under pretence of granting it. 

To declare that the First Cause is utterly inscrutable, 
and that we cannot assign to it any attributes whatever, is 
likewise to annul the admission of a First Cause. A cause 
must be a cause, and have the attributes of a cause. 
These attributes, as I have shown, are the attributes of 
spirit. There are but four possible elements of whose 
existence we have any evidence. The whole universe is 
but a manifestation in space and time of mind, or spirit, 
and mechanical force. But that idea of force is not de- 
rived from motion alone, which would only give invariable 
succession: it is derived from conscious effort in intellect- 
ual attention and in muscular exertion. The probability, 
therefore, becomes enormously strong that force is the 
product of mind, of spirit. Now, the idea of cause is inti- 
mately associated with that of force: it is derived from 
self-conscious, spontaneous determination to exert force,— 
either figuratively, by applying the mind, or literally, by 
muscular contraction. In this spontaneous determination 
of the ego is the only instance known to us of uncaused 
cause. Here we rest as in a cause which is a cause, and 
not merely a link in the chain of effects. And here alone 
can we really rest in the search for an ultimate cause of 
the cosmos: that ultimate cause is the spontaneous deter- 
mination of an Infinite Will. Mistaken theologians may 
strive to make the first chapter of Genesis a history of 
the process of creation, and mistaken physicists may 
speak of it contemptuously as a Hebrew myth; but, never- 
theless, that chapter stands in its sublime simplicity, solv- 
ing at a date of unknown antiquity the problem of prob- 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 195 


lems, and announcing the truth of all truths as perfectly 
as the highest philosopher of our century can do so,— the 
problem of the origin of all things, the truth of all truths, 
— that everything which is flashed into being at command 
of the infinite God. 

That a cause is a cause cannot be denied: neither is it 
a mere tautological assertion. It is an answer to the as- 
sertion sometimes made, that we can predicate of the First 
Cause no attributes whatever, when that assertion is made, 
not reverently,—as Scotus Erigena made it, only for the 
sake of emphasizing more earnestly the affirmation of 
God’s perfection,— but made for the purpose of invalidat- 
ing religious faith. A cause is a cause, with causal power 
manifesting itself in causal energy. The First Cause is a 
cause of infinite power, manifesting itself in the energies 
which pervade and move the universe. 

In the action of finite causes, properly so called,— that 
is, in the determinations, volitions, words, and deeds of 
finite creatures,— there is a revelation of the spiritual 
Mature.or-character ,of.the) actor.’ All» our actions are 
Speech, and, the proverb says, speak louder than words. 
Everything which a man does or Says, whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously, is a revelation of his character, 
A good judge of character does not ask to see or hear 
much of a man in order to gauge him. He is “well able 
of the lion’s claw to judge his royal symmetry and further 
properties,” 

It is so also in the action of the infinite First Cause. 
There is not an atom of matter which does not bear testi- 
mony to his infinite power, his perfect wisdom, his inex- 
haustible goodness. Even agnostic writers, as I remarked 
in a previous lecture, declare that there js no vice in the 


196 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


constitution of things, and that they can rest in serene 
confidence upon the ultimate beneficence of the workings 
of natural law. I say that, in the light of a true meta- 
physical analysis, these declarations are an admission of 
the truth of the theistic conclusions that God is power, 
that God is wisdom, and God is love. It is only a sort 
of color-blindness in the unbeliever’s mind, which renders 
him apparently incapable of seeing the reality of the rela- 
tions of: personality to infinity. He thinks personality 
necessarily finite. We see that personality transcends 
with ease all limits of finitude. 

The creation is in itself, therefore, a revelation from 
God. The primary use of the outward world is to serve 
the spirit. Nature serves as commodity for bodily needs ; 
but how charmingly Emerson has shown us in his first 
little volume, which he has never surpassed, that she also 
opens to us the mysteries of our own intellectual powers, 
furnishes us with symbols of speech, disciplines and in- 
vigorates our moral powers, touches and sanctifies us by 
her beauty, lifts us up to the vision of eternal good by 
her constant growth and decay of perishable forms! 

The external world is thus a school-house of God’s 
building, wherein we are—according to the prophet’s 
word, quoted with approval by our Saviour —all taught 
of God. All science, literature, and art is but the fruit 
of the exercises in that school. God is giving us perpetu- 
ually varying object-lessons, which we interpret to each 
other as he gives us ability. When children, we rest in 
the external and more obvious meaning of these objects; 
are “pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,” and do 
not know that we are gradually gaining better knowledge 
and deeper wisdom. Scholars differ in ability: some rise 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 197 


more and some less rapidly to the higher truths. But 
the direction of all, at least of all faithful students, is up- 
ward. Gradually, but surely, we learn that these things 
which perish with the using are leaving in the faithful 
mind things which are unseen and eternal. Gradually, 
but surely, we learn that the whole visible, sensible uni- 
verse is but a shadow passing away; and that it is a 
shadow of an intelligible world that passes not away. 
The lessons of nature do for us what the lessons of relig- 
ious and philosophic teachers, re-echoing the lessons of 
nature, fail to do. They teach us that the grass with- 
ereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God endur- 
eth forever; heaven and earth may pass away, but the 
word which createth shall not pass away. Very few 
thoughtful men, however much they may have despised 
religious teaching in their youth, come to the grave with 
gray hairs without expressing some obscure faith and 
hope in immortality. 

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that in some minds 
these religious hopes and aspirations remain very feeble 
and weak. There is a vast difference in the religious and 
moral, as there is in the artistic and scientific endowment 
of men. There are multitudes who seem incapable of 
receiving scientific truth, of shaking off superstition and 
belief in magic; there are multitudes apparently incap- 
able of appreciating beauty either in color or tone; and 
in like manner there are multitudes who appear unable to 
appreciate a higher morality or to grasp firmly a spiritual 
faith. 

If we adopt the theistic faith, and believe that an infi- 
nitely wise Being, who has created us to be happy, and 
made our nature such that our highest happiness —we 


198 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


might almost say our only happiness —is in love, in the 
interchange of thought, and in the mutual expression of 
affection, has also created the outward world to be a 
means of communicating with one another and with him, 
we must be ready to adopt, also, the conclusions which 
will flow naturally and necessarily from that view. 

It would seem that, if we and the universe are the crea- 
tion of an infinitely wise and infinitely good Being, then 
the recognition of that fact, the return of thanks to him, 
the remembrance of his goodness, the endeavor to carry 
out his purposes, the discipline of our will into submis- 
sion and even into unison with his will, the hope of his 
approval, the hope of further knowledge of him and of a 
better service to him, would be sources of joy greater and 
purer than any other joy. And it is not credible that an 
infinitely wise and good God would suffer such hopes and 
aspirations to be kindled in human hearts without per- 
mitting their fulfilment also. Whatever is really desir- 
able is possible; and whatever is really desirable and 
possible will, under the administration of an infinitely 
wise and good Creator, be one day actual. Effects are 
a revelation of the cause, and the highest and best effects 
most adequately reveal the cause. We judge of the qual- 
ity of a Newton, not by anecdotes about his absent-mind- 
edness, but by his “Principia.” John Milton is not to 
be judged by his sophisms on divorce, but by his 
“Paradise Lost” and his greater “Paradise Regained.” 
We may perhaps say that in the great poem of the uni- 
verse all parts are equal, that there is nothing superior 
to anything else, because all is perfect. Yet there is a 
difference of grade in the objects. Take, for example, 
the external world, and we cannot but regard crystalliza- 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 199 


tion as a higher phenomenon than shapeless massing. We 
cannot but regard chemical changes as more interesting 
and higher than mechanical. Vegetable growth is more 
wonderful than chemical reaction, and animal life is supe- 
rior to vegetable. And the phenomena of consciousness 
in the animal kingdom rise grade above grade, until in 
man they take a sudden rise far above the highest animal. 
This is the untutored judgment even of a child. A boy 
of eight years old, visiting Cambridge, Mass., for the first 
time, was taken to call at a house where there was a 
baby six months old, and then to look at the wonders of 
Agassiz’s Museum. At night he was asked what was the 
most wonderful thing he had seen that day. Without a 
moment's hesitation, and entirely saa sponte, he answered, 
“Oh, the baby,” and then went on to say why,— because it 
would grow into a man, and even after death live eternally. 

Man’s will, his spontaneous self-determination, is a 
cause; but it is not a self-existent cause. We cannot go 
behind it in the chain of causation. We may give 
reasons for a choice, but the reasons did not cause the 
choice: the choice selected from the reasons, those to 
which to allow weight ; and the selection was more or less 
arbitrary. The human will is, therefore, a veritable cause. 
But it is a limited, restricted cause,— its range is finite in 
time and space and power. The individual will appears 
in time. <A year before a child was born that particular 
cause, which now manifests itself in the child’s nascent 
will, was hidden in the abyss of potentiality. The 
human will, therefore, is not a self-existent cause: it iste 
caused cause, it is an effect of the First Cause. And to us 
men it is the most wonderful of all effects known to 
us. In the magnitudes of space, time, and mechanical 


200 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


force, other things in the cosmos far exceed us; and 
the old philosophers called the external world the macro- 
cosm, the internal world the microcosm. But, if we 
measure by dignity, by the grandeur which appeals to 
reason rather than to the senses, the names should be 
reversed. It is philosophy which deals with the great 
world of thought and affection, wisdom and love; and 
science deals with the little world of matter and mo- 
tion,— matter and motion which are glorified only by 
being the medium through which the Eternal Mind com- 
municates expressions of thought and affection, wisdom 
and love, to the finite mind. If “stars and tides and 
matter and motion” do not reveal to us the thoughts of 
an infinite God, and unfold within us powers of thought 
akin to those of the great Creator, if they do not express 
to us the paternal love of God, and awaken in us holy 
sentiments of grateful loyalty, let the physical sciences 
be given over to the ridicule of Swift’s voyage to Laputa, 
Johnson’s ponderous censure in the ‘‘ Rambler,’ and 
Coleridge’s contemptuous supposition that the stars were 
created ‘‘to make dirt cheap.” 

The physical sciences are of interest and value to us 
- men only because the external world is the embodiment 
and illustration of the very same ideas of space and time 
which are developed in us by @ priorz speculations, and 
thus prove our kindred not to the things which perish, but 
to the eternal, uncaused, self-existent Cause of all causes. 
Take the so-called positive view of physical science; that 
is, assume that science is simply a generalization of the 
facts, of material existence, and not an interpretation of 
the ideas and meaning of the Author of nature, derived 
from a study of his autograph works, and you have made 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 201 


physical science a mere Gradgrind array of statistics, put 
into formulz only as into mnemonics. The distinction 
between empirical and rational formule becomes under 
that view obliterated : the distinction between magnitude 
and greatness vanishes. It must have been to star-gazers 
of this kind, to whom the ephemeris of the heavens was 
the end and crown of astronomy, that Schiller addressed 
his indignant lines : — 


‘Talk not to me, astronomers, always of stars and of motions : 
Worlds had never been made simply for science to trace. 
Grand is heaven’s host, doubtless ; in space there’s nothing sublimer ; 
But, good friends, the sublime wasn’t embodied in space.” 


The sublime lies in the act of the mind, reaching out 
beyond al] space and time, grasping at the infinite and 
eternal, expressing through the fleeting finite that which 
is alone stable and immeasurable. The value of the ex- 
ternal world, as interpreted by physical science, lies in 
the light it pours both ways; upon the Infinite Mind 
which created and upon the finite mind which studies it. 
This finite mind of man is itself the grandest thing which 
it can lay hold of, and make any approach toward under- 
standing. It is grandest in itself, in its actual manifesta- 
tion of intellect and heart and will. It is immeasurably 
grandest when you perceive that in this power of thought, 
of affections, of volitions, is the evidence of our sonship to 
God. In the human mind, as the grandest product of the 
great First Cause, we find the surest key to the nature of 
that Cause. No eternal flow of mechanical forces, how- 
ever great the variety of physical effects which it might 
produce, can be imagined as producing this human mind, 
which asserts itself to be more than a flow of mechanical 


202 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


force. No result of the mechanical force can be imag- 
ined to include the evolution of a new consciousness, con- 
scious perception, emotion, volition. The Ultimate Cause 
of this evolution must itself be a conscious perception of 
tenderest, holiest affections of Almighty Will. 

I acknowledge that I can form no imagination of an 
infinite degree of those attributes. But reason is higher 
than imagination; and reason shows that perception may 
exist in a degree that sees all the past, all the future, as 
present ; reason shows that love may exist in an infinite, 
all-wise benevolence; reason shows that a will may exist 
at whose single fiat the whole universe may spring out of 
an eternal potentiality into an eternal actuality. Nay, 
reason goes further, and from the necessity of a cause 
adequate to produce all the effects of human intelligence, 
human affection, and human enterprises, declares that 
such an infinite Personality does exist, and that it is his 
word which sustains creation. 

The creation is sustained by the word of God and, in 
one sense, is his word. It is a revelation of his being, 
his thoughts, and his purposes. “The duty of a created 
being,” says Jouffroy, ‘is defined by the design of his 
creator ; and the design of his creation may be discovered 
from a study of his organization.” Jouffroy here uses 
organization in its largest sense. The normal plan of 
animal life may be discovered from the organization of the 
body. I once heard Agassiz show a club of farmers how 
the very skeletons of the horse and of the ox proved that 
the latter could bear confinement in a stable with less 
injury than the former: the horse needed abundance of 
daily exercise, the ox but little; and this fact is written 
unmistakably even upon the bones of their frame. 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 203 


In like manner the body of man shows to a thorough 
student what are the proper rules for preserving bodily 
health and strength. Its period of growth and maturity 
indicate the normal limits of old age. With equal cer- 
tainty the mind and soul of man show to the careful and 
thorough student what are the best means of educating 
and developing its powers. This is a more important and 
more difficult study than the study of the body, and its 
progress is necessarily much slower. Man, for some rea- 
son, learns more slowly than the animals do. They all 
readily come up to the mark set by the higher geniuses in 
their species. The differences in the habits of animals of 
one species are trifling compared with the differences 
among men. 

The capacities of the species are judged by the best 
specimens of that species. The highest attainments of 
the best men indicate the grade to which men are to be 
elevated. The power of self-determination in man, his 
moral insight, his capacity for religious ideas and capabil- 
ities of religious emotion, are much more developed in 
men of the highest character; but they are unmistakably 
present even in the lowest man, and they set him incom- 
parably above all the animals. They are parts in his 
moral or spiritual organization, they indicate the end for 
which he was destined, they mark out his duty. Their 
possession is equivalent to having a direct command from 
God to walk in the light, to govern one’s self by the 
highest moral law, and consecrate one’s self to a religious 
obedience. But, when we attempt to obey this command, 
we find immense difficulties. We see constantly that a 
better life is possible. We labor year after year with our- 
selves, not trying to do what more gifted neighbors may 


204 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


have done, but trying to live as well and rise as high as 
we think we can and ought to do. Yet the progress is 
slow, and in many of the best men goes on to the very 
end of a long life. When we have learned how to live 
and are just beginning to do a part of what we wish, we 
are interrupted by death. Is that the end? 

This is the third of the three great topics,— God, Duty, 
Immortality. A majority of the great philosophers of the 
world have believed that man is immortal, that at death 
he passes into a state of being where he retains conscious- 
ness, memory, all spiritual faculties, yet without a body; 
at least, without such a body as that which we now have. 
Christ gave this faith in immortality such new emphasis 
that it became in the Christian a new life-inspiring doc- 
trine. He does not, however, appeal to it as a postulate, 
but rather develops it as a corollary. He says to the 
Sadducees, You admit that God exerted a special provi- 
dential care over Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and 
revealed himself to Moses. Do you not see that this 
intercourse of the infinite God with men proves man to 
be immortal, proves man to have been made in the image 
of God, and therefore in the image of his eternity? This 
reasoning of Christ is, in fact, the strongest of natural 
evidences for the immortality of the soul. When a man 
has clearly seen and admitted the existence of God,— that 
is, has admitted the wisdom and love, the truth and holi- 
ness, of the Ultimate Cause of the universe,— he very sel- 
dom fails to see that this proof of the being of God is a 
proof that man is made in the image of God. He very 
seldom fails, therefore, to be lifted by it into a hope of his 
own immortality. Those who refuse to believe in God say 
that this is making God in the image of man, degrading 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 205 


the Infinite Cause of all to a likeness of our earthly frailty. 
But the objection is not of real weight. We are under 
an invincible necessity of assuming a cause of the uni- 
verse. We are under an equal necessity of assuming that 
either conscious or unconscious being is our best type 
of that cause. And we clearly see that consciousness is 
higher than unconsciousness, therefore the better type 
of the highest. We clearly see, also, that conscious will 
is the only real finite cause known to us, therefore the 
only just type of the infinite First Cause. This very 
process, by which the idea of an infinite God is brought 
out distinctly in our minds and contrasted with all the 
things which he has made, leads us, therefore, also to sec 
that we, in our spiritual powers of mind and heart and 
will, are the nearest likeness which we can have of him 
who is not in the likeness of any outward thing. 

The philosophers find, also, in various spiritual consid- 
erations, confirmations of the faith that we are made in 
the image of God’s eternity. The indivisible unity of the 
self-conscious spirit has been used as an argument for its 
indestructibility. The power of the mind to see and lay 
hold of ideas of the eternal, the infinite, the unchange- 
able, is also a proof of its own independence of change 
and motion. The moral instincts, the ineradicable faith 
in God's truth and justice, also demand an immortal life, 
wherein the inequalities of this life shall be rectified, and 
_ the righteous and the wicked be dealt with more exactly 
according to their deserts. The necessity of a future 
state for reward and punishment has been strongly felt by 
all nations who have shown any strong sense of moral 
right, any faith in the existence of a moral government in 
the universe. 


206 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


The ever-expansive power of the soul of man is another 
argument. There is no limit discernible to knowledge in 
any department. The works of God are inexhaustible, 
the curiosity of man insatiable. We want an eternity 
in which to pursue science. The heart also expands as 
widely as the horizon of the mind: art is as progressive 
as the arts. Social affections, social pleasures, are capa- 
ble of rising continually to higher planes, and taking in 
wider circles. The language of strong feeling always 
inclines to expressions which are called hyperbole. They 
surpass the present occasion, but they cannot exceed the 
nature of the soul that utters them. The heart has 
illimitable capacities for happiness, and its longings reach 
after an infinite love. 

Can these longings of the feeble human heart be 
greater than the riches of the whole universe? Cana 
feeble creature like man lay out in his thought and imag- 
ination a future grander, greater, more blessed, than the 
totality of all existence in which he is but a part? Can 
a small part contain immeasurably more than the immeas- 
urable whole? Surely not. That which is really desir- 
able for man, and which is revealed to man as desirable, 
is also possible, and shall one day be actual, even if it 
take an eternity to accomplish it. 

But, with our comparative ignorance, we do not always 
know what is desirable; and it is not always safe to pro- 
nounce upon what is possible. Every philosopher of note 
in all ages, even those most confident of the glorious 
reality of spiritual things and most firmly believing in 
God, in duty, and in immortality, has nevertheless con- 
fessed the weakness and fallibility of human reason. Like 
Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, he has acknowledged 


THE UNIVERSE A REVELATION 207 


that he was simply arriving at the most probable conclu- 
sions, not at demonstrations. 

But, it may be asked, how is it consistent with theistic 
faith in the wisdom and the love of God for him to allow 
these truths, the knowledge of which is so essential to 
the highest happiness and welfare of man, to be so ob- 
scurely revealed? Why did he not make them as plain 
as the plainest axiom of geometry? In reply to this 
doubting inquiry we may first remember that we do not 
know anything of the limits of possibility. There are 
men who find it exceedingly difficult to grasp the simplest 
truths of mathematics with any firmness of conviction: 
there are men who lay hold of spiritual truths with a firm- 
ness that cannot be shaken. The cause of such differ- 
ences, their possible limits, their possible elimination, and 
the advantages of their existence, are alike unknown to 
us. We are in the presence of facts, and can simply bow 
before the sovereignty of God; pleased and happy when 
we can understand the borders of his works; reverently 
silent and studious when we reach the confines of our 
present knowledge. 

We do not know why spiritual truths are not made glar- 
ingly certain to all men; but we do see that there can be 
no high happiness without virtue, no virtue without the 
opportunity of choosing between right and wrong, no op- 
portunity of choice between right and wrong unless there 
are times and opportunities when, at the parting of the 
ways, it may seem to admit of doubt which is the right 
way. There was a time when the Christian pulpit 
pressed earnestly upon its hearers the doctrine that this 
life is a scene of probation, wherein men are tried 
whether they will choose evil or good. The doctrine con- 


208 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


tains important truth: life is a scene of probation. 
God does not tempt us to evil, but he gives us opportunity 
to choose good; and that, of necessity, implies the possi- 
bility of choosing evil. He gives us the opportunity to 
choose good, knowing that in that free choice of good 
lies the highest happiness. 

Thus also with the perception of truth, and of the 
greatest of all truths,—the being and attributes of God. 
Our highest happiness comes from our free action. We 
rejoice in the truth; but especially in the truth which we 
find for ourselves. The discovery is the mount of rap- 
ture. May not this be one reason why the God of Infi- 
nite Love is a God that hideth himself? Spiritual truth, 
like mathematical and physical, is more highly prized 
when discovered by us. 

In the Scriptures of the Jewish and the Christian faith 
it is constantly implied, and sometimes distinctly as- 
serted, that man is made in the image of God. When 
the reason sees this clearly by intuition, and the under- 
standing confirms it by induction, and the will distinctly 
accepts it as a guiding and controlling truth, then the 
heart finds in it a source of illimitable peace and strength 
and joy. 


XIII. 
AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION. 


F Rom our own sense of truthfulness and from the funda- 
mental axioms of the oneness of human nature we learn 
to trust the testimony of our fellow-men. The whole 
structure of human society is based upon our confidence 
in each other, at least upon this as one of the chief corner- 
stones. Hence, testimony continually becomes a source 
of knowledge; and rules, or criteria, for estimating the 
value of testimony become as important as rules for test- 
ing the results of observation or for testing the deduc- 
tions of logic. 

Our fellow-men may testify to us either concerning 
their observations of sensible phenomena, of what they 
have seen, heard, felt, etc.; or concerning their states of 
consciousness, what they believe or feel, what they know 
or think they know, and what are their judgments of the 
grounds of their knowledge. And we form our estimate 
of the value of their testimony, not simply on our confi- 
dence in their truthfulness, but also on our confidence in 
their soundness of sense and of judgment, and on their 
probable or known opportunities for observation and for 
knowledge. The authority of those who tell us aright is 
thus estimated by us with care, and may range in its value 
from an absolute worthlessness up to an absolute author- 
ity which makes us as sure of what we are told as though 
we knew it from our own knowledge. 


210 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


Nor is any sphere of human thought exempt from the 
domain of authority. Go to the lowest spheres, in which 
it might be supposed there is least need of leaning on 
the testimony of authorities, and in which, indeed, it is 
often said that authority is not recognized, and you will 
find, on the contrary, that in the mathematics men lean 
continually on authority ; and that, without the most con- 
stant and complete trust in the testimony of men of au- 
thority, we could have had nothing of our modern naviga- 
tion, engineering, methods of insurance, and other applica- 
tions of the various forms of calculus. Even the greatest 
masters of the @ priori sciences of space and time build 
continually their most sublime deductions partly upon con- 
fidence in the results attained by the men of inferior genius 
who perform the drudgery of calculation for them, partly 
upon the theoretic conclusions of their fellow-masters in 
the highest fields. It is so also in the physical sciences, 
and so to a large extent in the historical sciences. 

When, however, we approach the psychological and the- 
ological departments of human science, the function of 
testimony and authority is diminished ; and there are those 
who refuse to allow them any place in these departments. 
I cannot, however, find any logical break in the grand 
hierarchy of sciences ; and the different position of testi- 
mony and authority in the different departments seems to 
me to arise only from the difference of development in the 
sciences themselves. Geometry is the foundation of learn- 
ing, and is first developed. Then come the other mathe- 
matics, then mechanics, next chemistry, and afterward 
physiology. Here already, before leaving physics, we have 
arrived at a science in which comparatively little is thor- 
oughly established, and in which, therefore, testimony and 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 211 


authority have less weight. We pass into and through 
the historical sciences, and enter the psychological. We 
find still the well-known and established parts contracting, 
and the partially known occupying relatively more space. 
Yet there are established laws in psychology, and we may 
reasonably ask a child to accept as certain those psycho- 
logical truths which are conceded by metaphysicians of 
every school. Thus also when we ascend into theology. 
It is reasonable that authority should have its weight here. 

The object of this course of lectures does not require 
me to go into the question of the evidences of Christian- 
ity, which were a vast subject to occupy even a whole 
course. /\s Christians, we believe that testimony is com- 
petent to assure us of facts that would demonstrate that 
certain men have had special opportunities of gaining 
knowledge in religion, and that their words are thus 
clothed with special authority on religious subjects ; and 
we believe that the Christian Church is not unreasonable 
in giving implicit faith to the words of the Great Teacher 
who testified of what he had seen in the bosom of God. 
But, in speaking of the natural sources of theology, it is 
only proper for me to point out that this implicit faith in 
the authority of Jesus is not contrary to the analogy of 
our conduct in other matters, and even in regard to other 
religious teachers. 

The child accepts his parents’ authority even in relig- 
ious matters, and it is reasonable that he should do so. 
And, although in adult age he learns that his parents were 
fallible and may have erred, yet their faith ought to create 
some presumption in favor of their creed. And, to what- 
ever years of wisdom we may attain, there always remains 
a presumption that even in the most difficult of all fields 


212 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


of human thought the general consent of wise and ju- 
dicious persons to a doctrine indicates the truth of that 
doctrine. It is not a mark of wisdom in a young man 
when he flies in the face of all his elders, and flippantly 
denies the fundamental doctrines of religion, in which the 
holiest and best men of all parties and sects are agreed. 
Man certainly is a religious being, and that is presumptive 
proof of the strongest kind that man sees some real 
truth in religious matters. This insight in religion is also 
to be presumed to be in some degree proportional to the 
religious character of the individual. The agreement in 
religious doctrines among the holiest and most saintly men 
of all denominations of Christendom, and even in Moham- 
medan and heathen lands, is much greater than the care- 
less observer would suppose. Men of religious character 
even in pagan countries, with sufficient civilization to 
make this character apparent, have held monotheistic 
views, have clung to a faith in the wisdom and benefi- 
cence and holiness of God, have believed in his provi- 
dence over individuals, in his answer to prayer, in his dis- 
pleasure at sin and his willingness to forgive the penitent, 
in his inspiration of our holiest and best thoughts, in 
the immortality of the individual soul and the retribu- 
tions of the world to come, in the obligations of piety 
and charity, and in love to God and kindness to men as 
the prime duties of man. These glorious doctrines of 
our Christian faith are, I say, held not only by all the 
best and noblest men in every age of the world and in 
every sect of Christendom, but in a more or less distinct 
form by the best and most enlightened heathen, of any 
saintliness of character. And this concurrent testimony 
to those great and main truths has a decided weight of 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 213 


authority in their favor, creates a strong presumption on 
their side, and throws the burden of proof wholly upon 
those who would deny them. 

I have alluded to the fact that we Christians also accept 
a much higher authority than this. We believe that for 
special purposes in the course of human history, there 
have been witnesses to theological truth admitted to 
peculiar opportunities of learning divine things, and that 
sundry great prophets and apostles, and, above them all, the 
spotless One who is the head of the Church, have spoken 
to us of that which they knew by means above those open 
to ordinary men. One of the great evidences they have 
given of their communion with God is the perfect con- 
formity of their teaching with our highest deductions from 
the light of nature. Especially in the case of the Lord 
when upon earth, we are convinced of the divinity of his 
mission and his authority, partly by the divinity of his 
character, by the conformity of his actions and sayings, 
under all circumstances, with our highest a priorz concep- 
tions of the dignity of the Son of God. 

We have in our own days a great many claimants to a 
certain sort of authority in spiritual and religious things; 
I refer to those who claim to be in communication with 
departed spirits. The claim is by no means new,—on the 
contrary, we have had it in all ages of the world,—and as 
far back as history goes we find allusions to those who 
held supposed intercourse with the dead. The fact that 
this belief has been common in all ages is certainly, at 
first sight, an argument in favor of itstruth. The doctrine 
must be founded on something real in human nature or 
human history. 

But, on the other hand, the most religious people have 


214 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


not usually accepted it, or have deemed it a wholly unsat- 
isfactory mode of getting a knowledge of the invisible 
world. Moses forbade it, the Christian Church has. re- 
pudiated it; and in its modern revival it has shown to us 
the causes of its perpetual presence in the world, and of 
its perpetual failure. Its presence is due to the inextin- 
guishable faith of man in human immortality, to the 
inappeasable longing of the heart for renewed commun- 
ion with the beloved dead, to the insatiable curiosity of 
the mind in regard to the unseen and future, and to the 
constant appearance of phenomena above our power to 
explain. Its perpetual failure to command the general 
assent and respect of the most enlightened men (despite 
the worth and standing of some who believe in it) lies 
partly in the very unsatisfactory nature of the tests by 
which it is attempted to establish the fact of communion 
with the dead, and partly in the total want of correspond- 
ence between the information given us by the supposed 
spirits and our own best and purest ideas of the spiritual 
world. The evidence which is strongest in behalf of the 
divine origin of the Bible is strongest against the claims 
of both ancient and modern necromancy,— the evidence 
arising from the comparison of the asserted revelation 
with the religious truths of direct intuition. The wide 
prevalence of faith in intercourse with the dead is a very 
strong argument in favor of believing such intercourse 
possible; but the utter failure of necromancy to obtain 
from the spirit world any responses worthy the higher 
light into which the saints have ascended leads us to sup- 
pose that, if the saints are permitted to have intercourse 
with the living, it is by the way of inspiration and provi- 
dential guidance,— by influences of which the recipient 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 215 


is not directly conscious. It is the faith of a very large 
majority of the Christian world that these influences from 
our ascended friends are not only possible, but actual,— 
influences which we, the recipients, cannot distinguish, 
on the one hand, from the workings of our own minds, 
nor, on the other, from the influences of the Spirit of God. 
And it is a universal belief of Christendom that the 
Spirit of God influences the hearts of men, and is the 
prompter of our best and holiest thoughts. 

Against this faith in spiritual influences, whether from 
angels and spirits or from God, the pseudo-science of our 
century cries out. In vain the goodly fellowship of the 
prophets, the noble army of martyrs, and the holy Church 
throughout the world unite in ascribing deliverance from 
temptation and the inspiration of holy thoughts and pur- 
poses to the indwelling Spirit of Christ and of God. The 
modern psychologist answers that all human thought and 
feeling must move by invariable laws of association, and 
that both free will in man, and the interference of free 
will in spiritual beings to influence us, are rigidly excluded 
by this reign of law. And I answer that this rigid in- 
variability of law, excluding the action of free will, is a 
mere assumption, not warranted by anything in the nature 
or necessities of science, and absolutely forbidden by the 
clear voice of consciousness and by the truths implied 
in the moral judgments of conscience. The doctrine of 
necessity, as I have already said, whether as expounded by 
Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, Priestley, or Spencer, is a 
fallacy, arising from the attempt to argue from infinite 
premises. 

Certainly, in the present case it can have no force. 
We influence each other’s thought and feeling in a thou- 


2h0) POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


sand ways. A judicious parent teaches his children, and 
endeavors to form their taste and judgment, not only by 
direct precept and open endeavor, but very often in silent 
ways without their knowledge. We receive influences 
very often without being conscious of it: we exert in- 
fluence also unconsciously. If these facts do not conflict 
with the certainty and invariability of psychologic laws, 
neither would the influences of angels or spirits. These 
spiritual influences could as well be in accordance with 
law, and yet be forever hidden from detection by us while 
in the flesh, as the unconscious influences of parents, 
teachers, and friends can be in accordance with law. 
There is no difficulty arising from the nature or action 
of psychological or physiological law which would hinder 
either God or angels or spirits from exerting influences 
over us similar to those we unconsciously exert over one 
another. The apparent difficulty comes from our at- 
tempting to argue from the infinite nature of God and 
the infinite or universal and invariable nature of law. 
From these premises, as I continually insist, it is not 
logically lawful to argue. If it were, I, too, could argue 
on the other side, and show that to Infinite Wisdom and 
Infinite Power laws inflexible and invariable become per- 
fectly plastic, and lead to any result deemed desirable by 
the infinite and infinitely loving God. What are we, and 
what our knowledge, that we should presume to say that 
the Almighty is not as free in his loving treatment of us 
as we in our treatment of our children? 

But the very nature of the organized bodies in which 
we dwell disproves this assumption of invariable law, 
and demonstrates that this house wherein the soul dwells 
is open for the reception of spiritual visitors. Let the be- 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 217 


liever in the development and evolution theories struggle 
as he may to reduce the laws of organic life to simplicity 
and unity, he cannot succeed in annihilating the differ- 
ences and specialties of the organic world. When he can 
conceive it possible that any inventive skill could make a 
machine which would (to expand Diderot’s simile) cast 
constantly a succession of type, and then, worked only by 
steam, and without human guidance to arrange the letters 
so as to make successively the Iliad, the Odyssey, the 
fEneid, the Divina Commedia, the Paradise Lost, the 
plays of Shakspere, the Principia of Newton, and so on 
through all the range of human literature,— when he can 
at my request conceive this machine possible, then I may 
at his request attempt the much more difficult concep- 
tion that any general laws whatever can have produced 
the myriads of specific forms of plants and animals, each 
showing the guidance of thought as distinctly as any 
poem or other work of human art, and all bound together 
by the most beautiful laws of intellectual connection and 
harmony into one divine scripture of nature. In every 
organic form, and @ fortzorz in the human body, the most 
perfect of those forms, there is evidence of a constant 
spiritual guidance of the forces of nature to bring about a 
specific result. And whatever be the nature of that con- 
stant spiritual guidance, whether it be the incessant voli- 
tion of a conscious spirit higher than ours, or the un- 
conscious action of such a spirit, or the unconscious 
action of our own souls, following the laws of our spiritual 
nature,—in either case, I say, there is demonstrative evi- 
dence that in our human frame other powers are at work 
than the mere forces of nature. There is a spiritual 
guidance of those forces to make them build and repair 


218 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


the individual and unique form of our body. This cuid- 
ance cannot result from any conceivable system of general 
physical laws,—laws of matter and motion; and yet this 
guidance is not in opposition to, or violation of, those 
laws, nor inconsistent with the supposition of spiritual 
laws governing our conscious life. This spiritual cui- 
dance of the chemical forces, leading them to build up 
the body peculiar to each individual man, proves that 
we are not simply under the domain of the universal and 
invariable molecular forces; that spirit rules within us to 
the accomplishment of special ends, without our con- 
scious recognition of that rule; and that, therefore, the 
doctrine of inspiration by higher spirits, and the gracious 
influences of God,—Zinspiration given without our con- 
scious reception, and manifested only in the purer affec- 
tions, the more spiritual wisdom, the more saintly lines 
of its recipients,— is, as I have said, not inconsistent with 
the truths either of physiology or psychology. 

By the very hypothesis of such inspiration it is assumed 
to be indistinguishable by us from the action of the laws 
of the association of ideas and from the promptings of 
genius. Genius is native talent, ability born in us, and 
usually supposed to be the inheritance of ancestral cult- 
ure. Toa large extent we can trace the laws of inheri- 
tance, and show from what ancestry men of particular 
ability derived their peculiar gifts. The inheritance of 
mental and moral characters, and especially the inheri- 
tance of such qualities from the father’s line of descent, 
cannot be ascribed to the mere laws of matter and motion. 
It must be ascribed to spiritual laws, —laws acting on some- 
thing else than the mere brain and body, acting on that 
spiritual nature which guides the molecular forces in the 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 219 


building of the body. Genius must therefore forever be 
indistinguishable by us from the promptings of inspira- 
tion; and here is another opening whereby we are left free 
for visitations from on high, which shall not interfere with 
our conscious liberty. When the man of poetic genius 
suddenly and without conscious effort or the slightest pre- 
meditation utters a new poem; or the mathematician in 
like manner, while thinking of something entirely foreign 
to his science, sees as by a flash of heavenly light some 
new geometrical truth that unlocks at once a thousand 
secrets of nature, and puts new keys of power into the 
hands of men; or when the humble Christian believer, 
struggling under infirmities of his own temper, under the 
force of temptations to a sinful and selfish life, under 
doubts and blindness, and dread lest it be true that mat- 
ter and motion are the sum and substance of all things, 
and that the end of all is to be eternal silence, eternal 
frost, and eternal death, suddenly feels his heart thaw as 
under a heavenly sun, beholds the mists roll away, and a 
world of transcendent spiritual beauty reveal to him his 
own higher destiny as a child of the infinite and infinitely 
loving God, and his soul swells and thrills in that glorious 
liberty,— when thus men in various moods and of various 
powers experience a sudden influx of life and light, lifting 
them for the moment far above the level of their ordinary 
experience, it is, and may forever be, impossible for them 
to decide to which of three sources they shall attribute 
the happy change,— to some physiological action on the 
brain, giving it unwonted freedom in response to their 
spiritual activity; or to some unwonted energy of their 
own spiritual action, compelling the brain to more prompt 
obedience than usual; or to some inspiration from unseen 


220 POSTULATES. OF REVELATION 


spirits, and perchance from the highest source of spiritual 
life, from the ascended Saviour, or from the Almighty 
God. I have, I think, shown that this third supposition, 
which is the doctrine of the Christian formula of bap- 
tism, is not discordant with the doctrines of natural 
science. 

The light of nature will not, however, carry us beyond 
the recognition of the being of God and his attributes. 
We cannot, by arguing from those attributes, since they 
are infinite, gain anything more than probable results, or 
results of very general form. The forgiveness of sins, and 
the influence of forgiveness upon the retribution for guilt, 
are points upon which we cannot dogmatize. On the 
one side it has been argued from the justice of God and 
his infinite holiness, that sin is by nature unpardonable, 
and retribution infinite and eternal. On the other hand 
from those same infinite attributes and the infinite love 
of God, it is argued that sin must be temporary and the 
final eternal blessedness of all souls certain. From in- 
finite attributes we cannot argue demonstratively and 
boldly. 

Thus, also, with the doctrine of the influences of the 
spirit of God: it cannot be demonstrated; it can only 
be defended from the objections of pseudo science, and 
shown to have strong @ griort probability in its favor, 
That probability arises from the paternal character of the 
Deity and from the longing which every religious soul has 
for the assurance of a personal intercourse with Him. 
The desire of all nations shall come. What is universally 
desired by the best souls, and desired with an ardor pro- 
portionate to their holiness of character, must be truly 
desirable ; and all that is truly desirable is possible, and 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 221 


will become actual. But whether the higher light flood- 
ing the soul and awakening it to a renewed consciousness 
of its divine origin and kindred comes from genius or 
from inspiration, it gives to its recipient a certain measure 
of authority over us. We are often competent to receive 
truth and to test its truthfulness, when we are not at all 
competent to its discovery. As school-boys may know 
whether a formula is correct or not by testing it, by its 
application to a variety of simple numerical examples, and 
yet not have the slightest power to discover the true 
formula, or correct its error if erroneously given, so men 
in general may recognize at once moral and religious 
truths, the beauty and holiness, the truthfulness and value, 
of the best utterances of saints and prophets, without 
being themselves able to put their best thoughts into 
words, or even to lift their thoughts unaided to the 
heights to which the word of the saints may lift them. 
Men know this divine character of the best moral and re- 
ligious utterances by the echo it finds in their own hearts, 
and by the evident justness of its application to their own 
experience and that of their neighbors. There is a sense, 
also, in which a man in his better moments may become 
an authority to himself in his weaker hours. The mathe- 
matician may forget the steps by which he once demon- 
strated a truth, and through temporary indisposition be 
unable to recall them; but, if he remembers that he 
once proved the truth, he still believes it true on his own 
authority. | 

I have already spoken of the authority possessed by the 
united testimony of the good; and I might add that the 
agreement of the great multitude of the saints in all ages 
of the Church, and even in pagan lands, in so many of the 


222 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


great doctrines of monotheism, creates also a presumption 
that the presence and guidance of the Spirit of Truth have 
not been wanting. But even in cases in which the multi- 
tude of the saints has not spoken, even on points of rarer 
interest or of deeper and more peculiar experience, the 
voice of a man of holy character is entitled to weight, and 
creates a presumption in favor of the truth of what he 
says, strong in proportion to his holiness and the glow of 
divine love within him.” To the great Swedish seer, I 
believe, we owe the sentence that love is luminous; and it 
embodies a pregnant truth, acknowledged in some form by 
all the wise and holy men before and since the apostle 
John, who gave us the formula, “He that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God, and knoweth God.” 

While the law is undoubtedly true that feeling and per- 
ception as states of consciousness have some tendency 
to exclude each other, and that therefore a man may be 
blinded by the ardor of his feelings, it is also true that 
there can be no clear vision without attention, and no at- 
tention until an interest be aroused, and no interest in 
the beautiful and the holy without adoration. 

No man cold and indifferent to the issues of the late 
Civil War, without sympathy in the ordinary trials, suffer- 
ings, and joys of life, and without a quick feeling of the 
expression of form, can give a just judgment on the ex- 
quisite statuettes of Rogers. No man unmoved by har- 
monies of coloring, indifferent to the grandeur of the 
mountains, and to the solemnity of the storm, and to the 
tragical interest of the White Mountain Notch, could be 
a just judge of the fine effort to tell on canvas the story 
of the eventful August night which has hung its shadow 
over that pass for more than sixty years. No man who 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 223 


despises natural science, and is totally devoid of interest in 
the questions it discusses, is competent to sit in judgment 
upon the works of Peirce, of Gibbs, of Dana, of Gray, or 
of Agassiz. What is the judgment of a man entirely de- 
void both of ear and of taste for music,— I ask, what is his 
judgment worth concerning the value of Beethoven’s 
‘“‘Mount of Olives” or Rossini’s “ William Tell” ? 

It is evident that, while enthusiasm may mislead and 
too great a depth of feeling may blind the judgment, it is 
even more emphatically true that coldness will lead to un- 
just judgment, and aversion or dislike to a subject render 
it almost impossible to form any correct opinions on it. 
If we are moved by human testimony and by the authority 
of our fellow-men at all upon any question, we should give 
the greatest weight, other things being equal, to the opin- 
ions of those interested in that question and moderately 
enthusiastic upon it. I say, moderately enthusiastic; be- 
cause we must acknowledge that an over-zeal leads to ex- 
travagance of opinion. But the highest healthy enthu- 
siasm gives the clearest sight. 

If, now, we apply these self-evident remarks to the 
questions of theology, we shall see that it is only those 
who are of religious temperament that are likely to form 
a sound judgment on religious matters, and that it is per- 
fectly reasonable for those who have less feeling upon the 
matter to give great weight to opinions agreed to by the 
majority of more devout men. 

If for any cause I am inclined to doubt the being of 
God, the efficacy of prayer, the immortality of the soul, 
the forgiveness of sin, and sink into acquiescence with the 
notion that man perishes at death, then I ought to remem- 
ber that those whose lives have given the best proof of a 


224 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


religious nature, and who have been most thoroughly and 
practically interested in such questions, have with great 
unanimity proclaimed those doctrines which I am doubt- 
ing,—proclaimed them as the most certain of all truths. 
When the deeper feelings of the heart are aroused, we 
leave all pantheistic speculations, and fly to the bosom of 
God as to afather. In the hours of deepest need, and 
when our holiest longings are awakened, God is not an 
unknown and unknowable mystery, but a Father of infi- 
nite power, of unsearchable wisdom, of boundless love, of 
unspeakable tenderness, who is the only judge to decide 
what suffering and disappointment, what agony and bloody 
sweat, may be necessary for us in this life, to prepare us 
for the unutterable joys of the world to come. These 
doctrines held by men of devout character at all time, and 
held by nearly all men in their hours of thorough awaken- 
ing, are rendered a priori probable by the very fact that 
they thus command assent from the best judges. 

I was recently reading to a friend the report of a scene 
in our National Academy of Sciences. The superintend- 
ent of the Coast Survey had poured out with great ear- 
nestness a mathematical discovery of his own, which he 
deemed of the highest importance; but it was necessarily 
clothed in language perfectly unintelligible to the great 
majority of his hearers. When he had closed, and all were 
sitting in silent bewilderment, the great zodlogist arose, 
and said in substance, “I must confess I have not under- 
stood one word of this communication ; but I have hereto- 
fore had such ample reason to believe in the speaker's 
clearness and soundness of thought that I accept what 
he has now said as undoubtedly true, and undoubtedly to 
be of great practical value.” When I had read this an- 


AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 225 


ecdote to my friend, he exclaimed: That is precisely my 
feeling toward Jesus Christ. Jesus assures me of the 
paternal character of God and of the immortality of the 
individual soul. How he gets that knowledge I do not 
know. I cannot see those truths written clearly on the 
world, nor on the human soul. Without Christ, I could 
only hope they were true. But I have seen and do see 
so many proofs of the wonderful wisdom and clearness of 
thought and holiness of character in Jesus Christ that, 
when he says he knows they are true, I believe he does 
know; and I rest implicit faith in his word. Theorizers 
about it may debate as they will concerning the character 
and degree of his inspiration, and the nature of his rela- 
tion to God and man. It is enough for me that the 
whole volume of the New Testament gives me perfect 
faith in his wisdom and holiness and truth; and, when 
he says he knows God is our father, I know that he 
knows it, and therefore I know it. 

It is always possible to wander from your road either 
by going to the left or by going to the right. In our 
Protestant liberty we have justly refused to admit either 
the infallibility of the pope or of the Church; but we run 
into danger of great folly and absurdity, if we are thereby 
led to deny all authority in matters of religion. It is 
always reasonable to defer to the opinion of those best 
qualified to judge. Those best qualified to judge in any 
matter are those whose interest in it is real and practical, 
and has led them to devote their lives to it. We ought, 
therefore, in matters of religion to defer to the opinion of 
the holy and the pure in heart who have made it the study 
of their lives to gain a practical acquaintance with relig- 
ious truth, by first of all subjecting themselves to its 


226 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


power. These holy men may have gained their clearer 
knowledge of truth in various ways. Partly it came from 
their warmth of feeling, their interest in the subject. 
Partly it came from their purity of heart; for the law 
announced by the Lord, that the pure in heart shall see 
God, is a law of nature, and manifestly true. Partly it 
may have come from communing with angels and spirits, 
the unconscious reception of inspiration from the heavenly 
world. And partly it comes from the inspiration of 
God; first in the gift of a religious genius, and after- 
ward in the gracious influences promised by Jesus Christ, 
But, from whatever source it come, a holy and religious 
character is presumptive evidence of a correct knowledge 
of religious truths; and, therefore, the presumption is 
always in favor of those main doctrines of monotheism 
and piety which have been held with unwavering convic- 
tion by the saints of all ages and of all churches. 


XIV. 


SUMMARY OF NATURAL SOURCES OF 
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. 


Let us pass the last hour of our meditation together 
in a recapitulation of the sources of religious knowledge 
which we have found on examination trustworthy ; and, in 
order that we may carry away a positive impression of 
faith rather than any impression of controversy with 
doubt or denial, let us omit in this recapitulation any 
allusion to the modern forms of unbelief, which in my 
previous lectures I have endeavored to show all stand 
upon utterly untenable foundations, mostly drawing their 
conclusions from premises which attempt to define the 
infinite. 

The grand fundamental truth on which all philosophy 
and all science is built is that man has the power of per- 
ceiving things and their relations, of perceiving them 
either by outward sense or by inward apprehension. And 
for this power of perception, inward or outward, we use 
the term “sight.” Whatever we see, touch, hear, smell, 
taste, we say we see by outward sense. Whatever we per. 
ceive by reflection, or are conscious of in our own hearts 
and minds, we say we see by inward sight. 

In our first survey of the universe we see the difference 
between our own self and the rest of the universe,— the me 
and the not-me, myself and what is not myself. That is 


228 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


the first grand division which we make in classifying the 
objects of our perception. Then we quickly again divide 
the not-myself into my body and what is not my body. 
My body is subservient to my thoughts and wishes. 
What is not my body is not so directly obedient to me. 
It obeys only a compulsion applied in some manner 
through some part of my body. We then very rapidly, 
very early in our conscious life, proceed to another divi- 
sion, and discover the existence of other selves in the 
world, each with its body more directly subservient to 
it, and through its body obtaining, as we do, some con- 
trolling influence over matter. We thus learn the exist- 
ence of men as dwellers in organic forms and partial lords 
of the material world. We see, too, that the material 
world is vastly more like our bodies than it is like us. 
We take the further step long before adult age, and class 
our bodies in as a part of the material world; and our 
division becomes simply into matter and spirit. We rec- 
ognize that, to a large extent, spirit is lord over matter ; 
and careful experiment convinces us that matter is wholly 
inert. Yet we see matter in motion, even when no 
human spirit is acting upon it. Even the distant and 
vast stars are in motion. We rise at once to the con- 
ception of a mighty Spirit ruling the world, as we rule 
the small portions of it under our control; and reason 
pushes us to the conclusion that this Spirit is not only 
mighty, but almighty. 

Thus readily is the human intellect led to perceive the 
existence of the Almighty God, and the likeness to him in 
which man is created. But the notion thus obtained is 
very meagre. It presents the Deity only as the Almighty, 
and does not satisfy the longings of the heart after God, 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 229 


While man is in a rude and savage state, and his better 
affections are largely dormant, while the bodily appetites 
and passions, together with the lust for power and the 
greed for wealth, fill constantly the sphere of his con- 
sciousness, he does not feel the need of any better idea of 
God than this rude symbol of a chieftain or king mightier 
than any earthly ruler. 

But in the progress of higher culture, and especially in 
the culture of our Christian civilization, as it has been 
affected for centuries by the sublime teaching and hu- 
manizing influences of the gospel, men begin to desire 
some better knowledge of their Creator. A longing for 
communion with him arises. They look anxiously in 
every direction for further light concerning his being and 
character. They would fain test and legitimate to them- 
selves the sweet words concerning him which they find in 
the biographies of Jesus and in the books of those who 
follow that marvellous teaching. 

In search of these trustworthy natural sources of the- 
ology, they look within, and study their own intellectual 
and moral powers and powers of will, and find in each 
department some rays of the light for which they are 
longing. 

The intellect, beginning with the consideration of that. 
which is plainly known and thoroughly understood, finds 
itself, however, constantly confronted with an impene- 
trable wall of mystery. It recognizes the existence of 
spirit, yet finds that it knows spirit only by means of a 
few phenomena, and that the laws of those phenomena are 
only partially comprehended. There are hints which lead 
us to suspect our own minds and souls to be reservoirs 
of hidden, reserved, even unknown powers; and there are 


220 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


v 


clear proofs that the soul within us undergoes many modi- 
fications and accomplishes many effects which are not 
brought to the light of consciousness at all Yet these 
hidden depths of our being, bringing up their effects at 
length to the surface, show those efforts to be reasonable, 
exactly as though our reason and understanding had 
worked within us more deeply than we knew. But we 
cannot ascribe the guidance of the motion in these abysses 
of our nature to our own wisdom. We find in the rational 
results of the movement evidence of a Divine guidance, 
controlling to some extent, by laws hidden from our sight, 
the inmost springs and currents of our being. 

Moreover, we find the intellect striving incessantly after 
the infinite, pushing its inquiries into the past and coming 
eternities, inward to the very centre of the atom, outward 
beyond all the physical universe. The intellect refuses to 
find any here or now. Here has no limits. It is anywhere, 
everywhere: its boundaries are nowhere. Mow has no 
existence, All time is past or future; and the past and 
the future have no limits, save as they crowd against each 
other in the non-existent now. The intellect, thus refus- 
ing to be limited in thought, cannot believe itself limited 
in being. It asserts its own immortal and divine nature. 
Yet it is humbled in the consciousness of its ignorance, 
and, even with the vaguest recognition of the presence 
of thought in the universe, perceives that thought infi- 
nitely to transcend in wisdom all human powers, 

Thus the first inward survey of the powers of thought 
gives new testimony to the existence of the all-wise, om- 
niscient God. 

Searching, then, the affections, we find them betraying 
the like infinite nature. The very passions and appetites 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 231 


of the body rage within us like stormy seas, and sometimes 
seem entirely too vast for the little frame in which they 
are implanted. But a closer examination shows this to 
be an illusion. We are blending spiritual powers with 
carnal affections, and deceiving ourselves with a vain 
show. Not so, when we pass into the higher region of the 
affections,— the love of beauty, the love of friends, charity 
toward men, reverence toward men of excellence, grati- 
tude toward benefactors. In these higher affections which 
bind us to our fellow-men, we find no limits necessarily 
affixed, All the highest genius of our race has been ex- 
hausted in the vain endeavor to express the highest senti- 
ments of our nature; and, while we gratefully receive 
these attempted expressions at the hand of genius, and 
bow with reverence before the powers that have expressed 
so much, we, nevertheless, all feel that within our hearts 
are glowing deeper things than any that have yet been 
uttered. We could not rival the man of genius in his 
power of utterance; but were his friends, instead of prais- 
ing his utterance, to praise his depth of feeling, we should 
instantly feel offended, as Hamlet felt toward Laertes 
when boasting of his love, and ery with him, “T! ‘too? 


“I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers 
COudsnOL a 
Make up my sum,” 


No sculpture, no painting, no oratory, no poetry, not even 
any music, ever expressed all the depth of feeling in the 
human heart. Not even any music, do | say? Not even 
the sacrifice of all personal hopes and happiness, in the 
endurance of poverty, toil, suffering, and agonizing death, 
has expressed the whole depth of love in the hearts of 


232 POSTULATES ‘OF REVELATION 


many of those who have been glad to endure all things for 
the sake of wife or husband, parent or child, or for coun- 
try, or for humankind. 

And this heart so strong in love toward others has also 
an infinite longing for love in return. It rejoices in the 
smile of good men, it is glad with the sympathy of its be- 
loved; but it also looks trustingly up, and longs for for- 
giveness and blessing from God. All its great tides, bear- 
ing up our hopes and joys and sorrows, flooding every 
inlet of our being, and daily renewing our whole life with 
their motions, are perpetual witnesses to the existence of 
the great centre of attraction, the Author and Inspirer of 
all forces. The love of God is the only fountain copious 
enough to supply such a sea. The intellect, surveying 
these wondrous manifestations of the human heart, sees 
at once that it is absurd to ascribe such effects to any 
petty mechanical causes in the organization of the human 
body, and that the only rational conclusion is to refer 
them to a Being whose unfathomable love is commensur- 
able only with his almighty power and boundless wisdom. 

But our survey of the internal world, beginning early 
with our recognition of the will, and leading us to the Al- 
mighty, then recognizing the intellect and the heart as 
leading us justly and infallibly to ascribe wisdom and love 
to the Almighty God, now reveals to us sundry features 
of the world within and without that both confirm our 
first inductions, and open to us new consequences and 
new views of the truth attained. 

We have seen that we are not alone in the universe, 
that there are other men around us, that there may be 
other conscious beings than men, and that certainly there 
is a Being above all, in whose likeness, to some extent, we 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 233 


have been formed, since he manifests power and wisdom 
and love unlimited, as we manifest them faintly and 
feebly. In the contemplation of this spiritual universe, 
this goodly company of men and angels made in the image 
of God, we perceive that certain relations exist and must 
exist between them, that they have been made with refer- 
ence to each other, and that out of this order of relation 
to each other and to their Maker springs an obligation, 
binding us to certain courses, and forbidding others. 
We perceive that there is a difference outranking in im- 
portance all those which we have previously considered. 
It is the difference between right and wrong. We 
demand of ourselves conformity to the right. We are 
ashamed of ourselves that we choose the wrong. We 
carry this judgment of ourselves into our most secret 
thoughts and our most private hours, and are ashamed of 
ourselves and condemn ourselves for cherishing an un- 
worthy thought even in solitude. We feel that even for 
such secret wrong we deserve rebuke and chastisement, 
and we expect to receive it. Butfrom whom? We push 
this question, and find that this voice of conscience 
within us must be considered the voice of God within us, 
that it is his witness set in our hearts to remind us con- 
stantly of his perpetual knowledge of us and his just 
dealing with us. The Being who created all things, 
whose existence and power we see to be necessary as the 
cause of all, whose wisdom is the only explanation of the 
harmonies of the universe and whose inspiration is the 
only source of holy affections,—this God of wisdom, 
power, and love, must also see — nay, must have ordained 
—the relations between spiritual beings that first reveal 
to us the difference between right and wrong. God or- 


234 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


dained these relations, gifted us with power to see them, 
and with the moral sense to feel obligation and to rever- 
ence holiness. He must himself be all-holy. 

Our powers are his gifts. We can therefore neither see 
nor imagine aught greater than he. Stimulate our 
powers to their utmost, they cannot rise above the Being 
that made them; and, as we can readily form the idea of 
perfection,—that is, of a being to whom no new excellence 
could be added and in whom no existing excellence be in- 
creased,—God our Maker must be perfect, in holiness and 
in all his attributes. He is therefore just and merciful 
and true and faithful. Nor can our faith in these per- 
fections of the Deity be readily shaken. They are held 
explicitly or implicitly by all men of sound mind, as the 
very basis of all our daily thought and action. How do I 
know that the sun will rise to-morrow? I recently heard 
this question asked by one of the leading physicists and 
mathematicians of the world; and he answered himself by 
saying: I know that the sun will rise to-morrow only as I 
know the stability of every other law of nature. I know 
the invariability of natural law only by knowing the truth- 
fulness of the Deity. My moral conviction of the faithful- 
ness of God is the only basis on which I build my confi- 
dence in the permanence of natural laws. God has made 
the world as a school-house for man, and our education 
could not be well carried on if the laws of nature were 
subject to any fluctuation. 

In looking within, we notice also that we havea power of 
seeing space and time. Their existence is implied in the 
first phenomenon of matter,—that is, motion; and indeed, 
since both space and time are without bounds or parts or 
sensible properties, we should not have seen them but for 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 235 


motion, which calls our attention to them, and reveals our 
power of dividing both space and time into parts at our 
own will, by a mental act, and considering the relations of 
the parts to one another. There we discover that these 
intangible entities, having no powers either of spirit or 
matter, are so perfectly within the grasp of our intellect 
that we can make propositions perfectly defining certain 
of these relations; and by using these propositions as 
premises in reasoning we can deduce necessary conse- 
quence. Thus space and time form the subject of the 
first branch of mathematics, as defined in Peirce’s last 
great work. Out of this is evolved a science of quantity 
and a science of quality, mathematically treated, using 
perfect definitions and thus drawing necessary con- 
clusions. All this work upon space and time and quanti- 
tative and qualitative analysis is founded simply upon 
direct intuition or sight of truth, independent of the exter- 
nal senses or the external world. The conclusions thus 
mathematically reached upon space and time may be 
called a priori truths. They rest upon a division of space 
and time by our power of thought, and not to any great ex- 
tent upon the nature of space and time in themselves, In 
themselves and undivided, these elements are so devoid of 
interesting properties that they would give us few ideas. 
The conceptions of geometry and algebra, and of the 
various forms of the calculus, are therefore to be con- 
sidered pure creations of the human mind. Yet some of 
these pure intellectual creations of the human mind are 
found embodied in every atom of matter and in every 
combination thereof. Many others are found embodied in 
special parts of the material world, and some of these are 
of a high and difficult order. Moreover, in very many 


236 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


parts of this physical creation we find ideas embodied 
which, although not actually among those reached by the 
a priort road, are of the closest similarity to them; and in 
all parts of the universe we see manifest indications that 
ideas are there which may be at length grasped by our 
human minds. The whole encyclopzedia of the physical 
sciences is indeed only a statement in human language of 
the ideas which have already been discovered embodied in 
the physical universe; and the whole army of scientific in- 
vestigators are, whether consciously or unconsciously, 
pursuing no other end than endeavoring to unfold ideas 
expressed in the material universe and not yet read by 
man. What is the meaning of this recurrence in nature 
of the a priorz thought of man? Can we resist the con- 
clusion that the Maker of the world is the Maker of the 
soul, and that he has made the soul in the likeness of his 
own Being, inspiring us with thoughts to some feeble ex- 
tent like his own? 

But it is not the physical sciences alone that bear this 
glorious testimony to our divine kindred. The domain of 
science is extending beyond physics into political economy 
and government, education and psychology ; and the aim 
of science is everywhere the same. She seeks to under- 
stand things. She proceeds on the assumption that every- 
thing is intelligible, that everything is governed by some 
law which may be comprehended. And what is this as- 
sumption which every scientific student must make,— 
what is this but an assumption that everything was 
comprehended before it was made, and arranged in this 
intelligible order? Science is only an unfolding of the 
harmonies of the creation, a reverent pointing out of 
the wisdom and self-consistence of part of the creative 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 237 


thoughts of God. The whole universe may be thus con- 
sidered as a combination and expression of philosophical 
ideas, including many of those which we once considered 
our own, and many which will perhaps be discovered by 
the a priori road before they are perceived in the world. 
Indeed, one of the ablest of English writers upon the 
philosophy of the physical sciences maintains in a book 
of immense learning that this is always the actual process 
in the discovery of a natural law; namely, that the facts 
do not directly give it, but only dimly suggest it, so that 
the mind invents it a przorz as an hypothesis, and then 
verifies it by comparison with facts. 

But the world is not only an expression of thought, 
it is the accomplishment of purpose. It is a wonderful 
system of means and ends. The heavenly bodies accom- 
plish changes on the earth absolutely necessary for the 
vegetable and animal life upon our planet, in imparting 
heat and light and electric and actinic forces, and dis- 
tributing them aright; in providing also for those move- 
ments in the ocean and in the atmosphere which produce 
the changes of the weather,— the alternate sunshine and 
rain,— so necessary for every form of terrestrial life. The 
divisions of the earth itself are adapted to the same ends. 
The proportion of land and water and of the various 
elements, the elevation and slope of the continents, the 
quality of the atmosphere,— these and other adaptations 
fit the earth precisely for the home of living tribes. And 
not only for animal life: the nature and proportion of 
the elements fit the planet for the abode of civilized and 
intellectual men. All is so arranged that this earth be- 
comes the home, the workshop, the playground, the 
school-room, the temple of worship, for our race. Coming 


238 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


down now in our observation to the smaller field of the 
organized beings, to which all external things are adapted, 
the parts of the plant, of the animal, and especially of the 
human body, are all adapted to one another as perfect 
means to the accomplishment of essential ends. The 
organs of sensation, how wonderfully adapted to their 
work! What a miracle of mechanical excellence is the 
eye, and how little less miraculous the ear! The grosser 
organs impress us less as marvellous in complication or 
delicacy of adjustment, but are none the less perfectly 
adjusted to accomplish each its accustomed work. 

And I do not see any way in which a sound logic can 
avoid the conclusion that these myriad adaptations of 
means to ends were adaptations for those ends, that each 
thing was adjusted for the accomplishment of an in- 
tended end. 

Furthermore, we recognize an adaptation in general of 
the spiritual gifts in each animal to its organization. The 
animals that are especially fond of flies have special 
means of catching them,— the swallow, his swiftness and 
the bristly corners of his mouth; the dragon-fly, his ability 
to change his course instantaneously in flight; the spider, 
his web; the ploiaria, sharp wrist-spurs and long nails. 

Thus throughout the whole animal kingdom, thus in all 
the variety of national and individual character in men, 
each one finds pleasure in success, and likes to do what he 
can do, and can do what he likes to do. And this grand 
truth, illustrative of both the wisdom and the loving kind- 
ness of the Creator, is made only more strikingly true by 
the occasional instances in which the adaptation does not 
seem in that individual and in that particular respect so 
perfect as is usual. 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 239 


The universe is the embodiment of ideas, and the adap- 
tation of a system of means to ends; and one of those 
ends is to furnish an opportunity to intelligent human 
beings for the exercise of their higher powers. In our 
powers of perception we find special senses giving special 
reports concerning the world of matter and motion. 
The eye reports to us not only motions which we recog- 
nize at once as motions, but motions which we did not 
for many centuries know to be motions. We called them 
colors. So the ear reports to us motions which for many 
centuries we did not know to be wholly motions, although 
we knew them to be accompanied by motions. We called 
them sounds. The general nerves distributed over the 
body report to us still other motions, which we did not 
know to be motions, but called them heat, etc. We can- 
not dispense with these names of heat and light and 
electricity and chemical action, sound and color. These 
various modes of motion, although all motions, are all 
various; and each produces its specific effect on us, upon 
our senses and upon our feelings. In exceedingly simple 
cases of beauty we have been able to discover a part of the 
causes of beauty. We have discovered that beauty arises 
from the expression of simple arithmetical ideas, not 
recognized by the ear or eye as arithmetical ideas or 
forms of number, but only recognized as beauty of tone 
and harmony. In more complicated cases of musical ex- 
pression we are wholly without a clew to the meaning of 
the beauty or the cause of the expression. Yet we know 
that it cannot be accidental. The language of tone, the 
pathetic effect of one modulation, the joyous expression 
of another, the inspiriting power of martial strains, the 
touching emphasis of a song of the affections,— these are 


240 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


acknowledged and felt by men of every nation,— nay, 
even the animals are to some extent under their influence. 
It is a flippant and childish philosophy that would put this 
fact aside asof no meaning. There is proof here that the 
Creator of man knew how to produce the highest pleasure 
in us by the simplest means, and has taught us to recog- 
nize in simple arithmetical ratios of vibration a means of 
pouring out all the depths of varied passion and senti- 
ment, from the thoughtless carelessness of popular airs to 
the hellish fury of Medea as given by Cherubini, or to the 
rapture of the ransomed worlds as given by Beethoven. 

And the same argument may be drawn from other 
forms of beauty and other modes of expressing passion by 
means of art, as by form and color. They also are the ex- 
pressions primarily of very simple geometrical and arith- 
metical ideas, not recognized by us as intellectual ideas, 
not actually developed by us in that form except in the 
very simplest cases. To man is given not only the power 
in all these cases of recognizing the beauty, but also the 
divine power of reproducing it,—not only by a faithful 
copy of the natural form, but also by a production, in the 
spirit of nature, of new forms. And in the case of music 
this production of new forms is carried to a point of per- 
fection incomparably higher than that of the natural 
model. 

This work of artistic genius in creating the statue, the 
picture, the symphony, is in some sense a higher work 
than that of the intellect. It is at all events a distinctly 
spiritual and exalted work, and commands reverence and 
love toward the artist from those who see or hear the 
work, 

Now, the universe is not only a combination of ideas, 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 24I 


and of mechanical means to ends : it is a work of art of the 
highest order. Musical expression is by no means wholly 
wanting in it. The winds and the waves, the cries of ani- 
mals, and especially the song of birds, make expressive 
music. In beauty and expressiveness of form and color- 
ing the natural world far exceeds the efforts of the painter 
and sculptor. A glance of the living eye, lighted by the 
living soul within, when that soul is filled with earnest 
passion, makes the eyes even of Raphael’s faces dull and 
meaningless. 

One September afternoon, throwing its golden light 
on the landscape, surpasses all the possibilities of mere 
pigment, even under the hands of the highest human 
genius. Can we believe these exquisite effects of the 
landscape and of the human face were not foreseen by 
the creative Mind? Or does not the perpetual presence 
of beauty in all the forms and coloring of flowers, plants, 
rocks, rivers, ocean, and sky, in the autumnal landscape, 
and in the human face,— does not this perpetual presence 
of beauty bear perpetual testimony to a wise and loving 
God, and command love and reverence toward him from 
every beholder ? 

The artist also creates in his imagination ideal char- 
acters, and in the drama and the tale holds the mirror up 
to nature. The highest admiration is accorded to one 
who creates new personages, and makes them living reali- 
ties to us. The evidences of his skill are found in the 
unity of each character introduced in his work, in the ex- 
cellence and variety of the actors, and in the harmony 
with which the action of each contributes to a final result. 
But in these respects human society and human history 
form together an artistic work of the highest character ; 


242 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


and the long course of ages, exhibiting its innumerable 
individuals of wondrous excellence and its numberless 
by-plots leading to separate issues of great interest, is still 
ever tending to higher and higher final accomplishment 
worthy of its long delay, and to the production of which 
each of the various parts has been adapted, so that therein 
are marks of the creative wisdom peculiar and altogether 
different from those to which we have before referred, 

But it is in vain to endeavor to condense into a single 
hour an enumeration of all the varieties of argument by 
which this main doctrine of natural theology is established : 
that man is made in the image of his Creator, and may 
justly argue from his own thought and feeling, care only 
being taken to argue soundly and justly, to ie attributes 
and purposes of God. This is a conclusion reached by 
the many lines of induction, to which I have alluded very 
often, and against which I can find no solid or valid argu- 
ment. When from this conclusion, or from the attributes 
and purposes which we are, in conformity with it, led to 
assign to God, we attempt to draw inferences, then we 
must beware lest we also silently add infinity to our prem- 
ises, and reason from the infinite unreasonably. 

The induction which leads us to assign but one Cause 
to the universe, and to assign to that Cause infinite perfec- 
tions, and among those perfections to place power, wis- 
dom, holiness, justice, love, does not enable us to decide 
what those infinite attributes will imply in all supposable 
cases. Infinite power is not compatible with weakness, 
limitations, inabilities; nor infinite wisdom with igno- 
rance and mistakes and mal-adaptation of means to ends; 
nor infinite holiness and justice with leaving sin unre- 
buked and unpunished ; nor infinite love with leaving sen- 


NATURAL SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 243 


tient creatures in infinite and never-ending torment. In 
all these cases the conclusion is not drawn so much from 
the infinity as from the attribute itself. We may be, 
therefore, certain that God can and will hear and answer 
prayer, and make all things work together for good to his 
children ; and that he will certainly punish sin, but that 
he will not leave his children in infinite and unending tor- 
ment. But to argue from his infinite love that he must 
bring every creature finally to eternal happiness, or from 
his infinite justice that he must assign the incorrigibly 
wicked to eternal torment,— these conclusions are drawn 
from the infinite nature of the attribute more than from 
the attribute ; and, therefore, they are not safe conclusions. 

The light of nature is, indeed, clear, and leads us to 
most valuable conclusions; and we may devoutly thank 
God that it isso. But our natures are kindred to those 
of the infinite God; and, the more we have, the more do 
we desire. These inductions concerning our likeness to 
our Creator, and the inference of our own immortality 
which flows from them, make us only long more earnestly 
for a closer communion with him, for a more direct spirit- 
ual contact with him indwelling in our hearts. We pray 
for his guidance of our thoughts, for his purification of our 
desires, for his inspiration and strength to sanctify our 
feeble and corrupted will. And we have abundant rea- 
sons for believing that the prayer is acceptable and 
accepted, and that holier influences are poured upon us. 
Yet we are longing ever for more light, and trusting that, 
after the night of death, shall come a morning refulgent 
with a more heavenly glory. 

And the Christian saints devoutly believe, and I be- 
lieve with them, that this great light which is to break 


244 POSTULATES OF REVELATION 


upon us, when the shadows of death flee, has already 
dawned, and given us its first rays from over the hills of 
Galilee. They find in the person of Jesus of Nazareth 
a light clearer than the noon-day sun, and revealing to us 
more truth than the light of nature ever could reveal. 
They recognize in the man of Nazareth an image of God, 
answering, far more perfectly than any ideal being could, 
to our best conceptions of perfection. The ineffable ten- 
derness of his love toward men, and the gentleness of 
his dealing with sinners, give them an assurance of the 
forgiveness of sins, and of the present aid of the Holy 
Spirit, that they could not otherwise attain. . 

It has not pleased him to make further revelation of 
truths concerning God than were necessary to the salva- 
tion of the world, and upon those truths we could attain 
a glimmering light before; but he has made them plain 
and certain,— that God will forgive those who trust the 
promise of forgiveness and turn from their sins, that he 
will sanctify them and inspire them with a new power of 
holy and useful life, that both God and Christ will dwell 
in the heart of the penitent believer and make him con- 
queror over evil. 

And the history of the Christian Church abundantly 
witnesses the truth of these promises. In that Church, 
despite its manifold corruptions and failures and sins, 
there has always been a body of men distinguished for 
excellence of private character and clearness of religious 
faith, And I cannot resist the conviction that their 
excellence of character creates a strong presumption that 
their general views of religious things must have been 
true. 


IL 
POSTULATES OF ETHICS. 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS, 


THE present course of lectures discusses several inde- 
pendent and yet somewhat connected questions concern- 
ing the science of morality. Morality in its scientific 
aspect is, however, usually called by its Greek rather than 
its Latin name, since we always connect the thought of 
science with the Grecian rather than with the Roman 
race. This opening lecture consists simply of some 
remarks upon the general field of ethics, and its limita- 
tions both in height and breadth. 


“ From the cold earth in early spring, 
A flower peeped forth, dear fragrant thing ! 
Then sipped a bee, as half afraid; 
Sure, each was for the other made.” 


What a number and variety of contrasts and com- 
parisons must be made by one who reads with apprecia- 
tion this little poem of Goethe! The coldness of the 
earth in the spring awakens remembrance of the winter 
and hope of the summer; the deadness of the earth is 
contrasted with the life of the flower, the absence of odor 
in the one with the fragrance of the other, the life of 
the bee with the lifelessness of the earth and with the 
vegetable vitality of the plant, the enterprise of this bee 
with the present sloth of the hive and with its future 


248 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


summer activity, and the relation between the bee and 
the flower, and the relation of the whole to the divine 
plan of the universe are suggested. 

Comparisons and contrasts are thus always suggested 
and implied in all conscious thought, since all thought 
involves at least two ideas, or two objects and their rela- 
tion. In order to analyze this phenomenon, we must take 
simpler instances, or, at least, consider but a single one 
of the many contrasts or comparisons evoked in so com- 
plex an instance. 

All knowledge is, under one aspect, the knowledge of 
relations. All intellection is the interelection, or selec- 
tion, of some one part of the content of consciousness for 
a closer attention. It must thus of necessity pay a partial 
attention to the surrounding parts, to mark the boundary 
of the selected topic. All science is the result of these 
attempts to divide and define the parts of the general 
impressions made by the world upon the mind. Com- 
plete definition includes, however, generalization as well 
as differentiation ; the generalization being in fact a differ- 
entiation into larger groups. 

Lest these remarks should seem too vague and general 
to be of value, let me illustrate by examples more exactly 
what I mean by the general assertion that all knowledge 
may be put under the aspect of a knowledge only of 
relations. What do I know, for instance, of a material 
object, except its ability to produce sensations? Its 
relations to me or to other human beings —that is, its 
ability either directly or indirectly to produce sensations 
of color, smell, taste, sound, muscular resistance, tempera- 
ture, and what not —are all that I know of it. If you say, 
“Oh, no! I further know what the article is,’— gun- 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS 249 


powder, for example, that it is made of willow charcoal, 
saltpetre, and sulphur,— still I may ask, And what do 
we know of willow charcoal except the appearance, smell, 
taste, etc., of the willow-tree, the appearance and feeling of 
the fire that chars it ; and what of the sensible properties of 
the saltpetre and the sulphur? All our knowledge of the 
external world is of these sensible properties, and of the 
inferences logically involved in the sensations: it is, there- 
fore, in one sense, all included in the relation of the parts 
of the external world to one another and to our powers of 
sensation. All our knowledge of space is, again, the 
knowledge of the relations of the three dimensions each 
to each, of the possibilities of coexistence therein in- 
volved,— coexistence being a form of mutual relation in 
the external things which we know only as related to 
our possibilities of sensation. In like manner our knowl- 
edge of time is but a perception of the relations of suc- 
cession and the possibilities of duration; duration being 
a relation of antecedent to succeeding states. Even 
our knowledge of ourselves is, as it were, but a knowl- 
edge of our relation to the other objects of our knowl- 
edge,— that we see and know, and that they are seen 
and known. 

The human sciences are classified and divided, there- 
fore, according to the particular set of relations with 
which each one deals,— those relations being partly rela- 
tions lying in the objects contemplated, and partly lying 
between those objects and the percipient subject. In the 
subject, in the me, there have been recognized, for a cen- 
tury past, three great groups of faculties,— the intellect 
which sees the true, the heart which feels the beautiful, 
the will which strives after the good. When two ideas 


250 POSTULATES» OF /ETHICS 


or two objects are presented together or in rapid succes- 
sion to our attention, all three of the parts of our spiritual 
nature are affected. The intellect forms a judgment, the 
sentiments or feelings are to some degree excited, and the 
will is attracted or repelled. It depends upon the nature 
of the terms compared, which of the three departments of 
our being is aroused to the greatest activity. Sometimes 
the intellect is moved to a clear perception and judgment, 
while the feelings and desires are almost untouched. At 
other times the will is aroused to instantaneous action 
with scarce any conscious intellection or feeling. 

For example, two colors, when placed together, give to 
most eyes at once a feeling, agreeable or disagreeable, 
without exciting either the will or the intellect to con- 
scious activity. In like manner two musical tones heard 
simultaneously or in rapid succession awaken an agree- 
able or disagreeable feeling; but do not, of themselves, 
lead us to form any judgment or prompt us to any action. 
On the other hand, two propositions presented in rapid 
succession to the mind do not usually excite either feeling 
or will; but they create an instantaneous judgment of 
agreement or disagreement, connection or want of connec- 
tion, inference or lack of inference. It is by this com- 
parison of proposition with proposition that we extend our 
knowledge of truth. It is by the comparison of forms, of 
colors and tones, that we are aroused to the perception of 
beauty. But when the two ideas presented to the mind 
are the pictures of two persons, two beings possessed of 
intellect, feeling, and the power of choice of action,— 
especially when one of those beings is ourself, and we 
consider our own relation to some other person,—then 
among the sentiments which we feel is one different from 


THE FIELD OF. ETHICS 251 


all others, one directly and primarily bearing on the will. 
This is the feeling of duty ; and the judgment accompany- 
ing this sentiment is also different from all other judg- 
ments : it is a moral judgment. 

When the intellect compares two propositions, a logical 
necessity compels it to see their agreement or disagree- 
ment, their relation or want of relation. The inference 
which we draw from two propositions unmistakably clear 
and unmistakably related, does not depend upon our 
wish, our will, or our feeling, but solely upon the clear- 
ness of our perception of the two truths and of their rela- 
tion. It is a logically necessary inference. In like 
manner, when we see two colors or hear two tones, our 
feeling of pleasure or pain at the harmony or discord is 
independent of our judgment and independent of our will. 
It is an zesthetically necessary feeling. So also, when we 


- contemplate the bringing of two persons into contact, there 


is a necessity upon us, strong as the logical necessity of 
drawing an inference, strong as the esthetic necessity of 
appreciating harmony. It is the moral necessity of per- 
ceiving that the relation of persons involves rights and 
duties. It cannot be denied that in the logical necessity 
there lies concealed some slight power of interesting 
the feelings and stimulating the will, and that in the 
esthetic necessity there is some obscure judgment, and 
faint aversion or attraction slightly prompting volition. 
Thus, also, the moral necessity involves some intellectual 
action. There must be a perception of the reality of the 
relation. It also has an effect upon the feelings; for 
virtue is beautiful, and vice is ugly. Yet the distinguish- 
ing peculiarity of moral necessity is that, precisely as logi- 
cal necessity binds the judgment, and zsthetic necessity 


252 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


binds the feelings, so moral necessity constrains to voli- 
tion and action. 

Thus, of the three great groups of our faculties, each rec- 
ognizes a necessity over it. The intellect must decide upon 
the evidence before it, according to its view of the evi- 
dence. If it fails so to do, it becomes folly and _ intellect- 
ual weakness: it falls into errors, and believes in lies. 
The heart is under an zsthetic necessity of being pleased 
by the beautiful and repelled by the ugly. If it fails so to 
do, it becomes corrupted, sinks toward a mere sensual and 
earthly life, and loses the higher joys which are the true 
birthright of man. But the highest necessity is the moral 
necessity, under which the will of man is bound to follow 
the right and avoid the wrong. If he fails to obey it, he 
forfeits the highest privilege of his birthright, and entails 
upon himself the greatest evil. The three parts of our 
nature lie in this order, one above another; and the three 
necessities lie in this order, the moral necessity being the 
highest, and resistance to it being followed by the most 
severe consequences. 

Here, then, is the striking peculiarity of the science of 
ethics. It treats not so much of that which is as of that 
which ought to be. The mathematics deal with the 
actually existing relations of space and time; physics, with 
those of matter; zsthetics, with those between realities 
and the soul perceiving them. But ethics, although deal- 
ing with the actually existing relation between souls, 
between persons, between beings capable of thought and 
action, considers them only as they are capable of action, 
and handles the question of what they ought to do, 
There can be no moral relation between a person and a 
thing unless that thing be connected with another per- 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS 253 


son, and so become merely an intermediate term between 
two persons. 

Now, if we attempt to analyze a simple idea, we fall at 
once into absurdities. Analysis must end when we come 
to simples. There may be a difficulty in determining 
what is simple, but certainly we sometimes arrive at ideas 
that we can neither decompose nor conceive to be decom- 
posable. No man can reduce to simpler elements the 
idea of number or of space or of time or of motion, of 
color, of sound, of taste. We may analyze the mode in 
which we arrive at these conceptions, the mode by which 
these ideas are called into the sphere of consciousness; 
but the ideas themselves are each absolutely indivisible. 

Suppose that we are asked why we are obliged to admit 
the logical conclusion from two premises. No answer 
can be given. When I have admitted that every a is 
@wand that every'cis’ @, 1 'must, of necessity, admit 
that every ¢ is 6, But I cannot say whence this ne- 
cessity arises. Any attempt to do so merely brings 
us to Molicre’s explanation that opium makes us sleep 
because it has soporific qualities. I may reduce it to 
the mathematical axiom that what is included in an en- 
closure is included in the boundaries of that enclosure. 
But this merely alters the form of statement. It does not 
simplify the nature of that syllogism in barbara. I may 
say that it is the constitution of my mind which compels 
me to admit this verity, that it is an anthropomorphic 
statement. But this does not simplify the conception, nor 
take a step toward explaining it. It merely suggests a 
new inconceivable hypothesis,— the hypothesis that there 
may be minds, intelligent beings, who see that what is 
enclosed in an enclosure is not contained within the 


254 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


boundaries of that enclosure. Take the simplest case, in 
which both premises are self-evident truths: the conclu- 
sion is then self-evident, and there is a logical necessity 
for accepting it. The man who does not accept it merely 
shows that, either from mental incapacity or from inatten- 
tion, he does not see what is self-evident. And the 
veriest agnostic idealist assumes, in his attempt to prove 
his thesis, that there are self-evident truths. 

In like manner, no zsthetic judgment can be reduced 
to simpler elements. Here are two tones sounding to- 
gether: every sensitive ear pronounces them discordant. 
The musician cannot explain why they are discordant: 
he can only state the fact. They are disagreeable to his 
ear and to the ears of musical people in general. Why 
they are so neither he nor they can tell. The man to 
whom they are not disagreeable simply shows himself 
to be incapable of appreciating harmony. His incapacity 
casts no discredit upon the testimony of those who are 
capable. 

In the case of music, however, science comes in and 
confirms the musical judgment by very peculiar testimony, 
The musical sense, which is wholly an esthetic sense, re- 
ferring only to the feeling excited by the chord or discord, 
the melody or the false progression, is unable to explain 
to the intellect the reason of its likes and dislikes. Physi- 
cal science is equally incompetent to do so; and yet 
physical science has demonstrated that in those musical 
tones which are in harmony there is an arithmetical har- 
mony, not perceived as such by the ear, but which, never- 
theless, is doubtless the efficient cause of the musical 
harmony which is perceived. 

The testimony of science goes even further than this. 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS 255 


It shows that the musical taste or power of civilized 
nations has constantly improved in its judgment. Many 
modes of music (in the technical sense of the word 
“mode’’) have been discarded, especially since the mod- 
ern improvements in harmony. The major and minor 
modes are the only ones which at the present day are 
used to any large extent; and, of these two, the major is 
by far most frequently employed. This state of things 
has not been brought about by any sudden change of 
fancy in the musical public, but is the result of a gradual 
growth in the art of music, guided solely by zsthetic feel- 
ing. Dr. Erasmus Darwin declares that all musical taste 
is wholly artificial, and dependent solely upon association 
of ideas for its musical judgments. In Dr. Darwin’s day, 
nearly a century ago, musicians could make no reply to 
these assertions; that is, no reply which an unmusical 
man could accept as satisfactory. But to-day the case is 
far different. Physical science and the mathematics com- 
bine to prove that the musical sense has, in all respects, 
through the course of all ages, been guided by arithmeti- 
cal harmonies, not perceived as such, but perceived only 
in their zesthetic effect.* I call your attention to this 
fact, not as a vindication of music, but as a vindication of 
the zsthetic nature as being a safe guide to truth. 
Science has not yet done for color so much as it has 
accomplished for tone; nor have all the phenomena of 
music, all its mental effects, been shown to depend upon 
arithmetical proportion in the frequency of vibration in 
the air. Nevertheless, the discoveries in musical statics 
are very numerous and very important. They demonstrate 


*In the major mode the arithmetical harmonies are most abundant. Then comes the 
minor mode, after which at a long interval come the old discarded modes. 


256 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


beyond cavil that the musical sense of harmony and 
melody is based upon what Plato paradoxically called 
an unconscious perception of proportion in the frequency 
of vibrations, which are too frequent to be recognized as 
vibrations, but are heard as continuous tones. Hay, in 
his science of beauty, has shown that the esthetic percep- 
tion of beauty in form is, in like manner, the perception 
of arithmetical ratios in angles and even in potential 
angles; that is, angles*not as seen, but as suggested by 
the figure. I have, myself, by numerous experiments, 
both upon individuals and upon classes in school, and con- 
ducted with every precaution against error, proved the 
reality and accuracy of Hay’s results. I have even gone 
further, and experimentally proved that a good eye for 
geometrical beauty recognizes as beautiful forms involv- 
ing the incommensurable ratio of extreme and mean pro- 
portion. 

The importance of these results would not be vitiated, 
were it possible to establish the theory that the expres- 
sion of music, of color, and of form, is due solely to the 
association of ideas. But, in my judgment, there are no 
facts which can be properly said to lend that theory a sup- 
port; nor can I conceive any mode by which the associa- 
tion of ideas should come in play in the process of mak- 
ing a concord agreeable or a discord disagreeable. The 
elements of the tones, whether of sound or color, have 
never been distinguished by the unassisted eye or ear, 
and are not known even by report to the best colorists 
and musicians. The improvement in the art of music is 
not due to any increase of knowledge concerning the sci- 
entific elements of music, but solely to the increased ex- 
ercise of discrimination in the feelings themselves. The 


THE FIELD’ OF ETHICS 257 


musical sounds, on the one side, and the musical composer 
hearing them in reality or imagination, on the other, and 
judging of them solely by their effect on his feelings, as 
he repeats or varies them,—these are the means by 
which the oratorio and symphony of our day have been 
developed from the rude essays of early art. 

I may illustrate this by a blind friend, whom I proved, 
through many carefully guarded experiments, to have a 
less sensitive ear and less sensitive nerves of touch than 
myself. I, therefore, heard and felt even more than he 
did; but, by his long practice of discrimination, he had 
learned the meaning of ten thousand variations in sound 
which I did not even separate from the other sounds with 
which they were mingled. Hearing became to him a tol- 
erable substitute for sight; not because his ear was any 
more sensitive than mine either by nature or by education, 
but simply because his judgment concerning the sounds 
which reached his ear was better trained. The modern 
musical ear is no more sensitive than the ancient, nor 
has modern acoustics been of any especial service to 
music. In all respects the progress in music has arisen 
from increased attention to the zsthetic effects them- 
selves. 

Analogous remarks, in all these respects, may be made 
concerning the moral judgment and the science of ethics. 
Moral relations exist between persons. Place two per- 
sons in reality or in imagination in a given situation, and 
a sound ethical nature gives at once an ethical judgment 
concerning them, as direct, simple, and final as a musi- 
cian’s judgment concerning the harmony of two tones or 
a painter’s concerning the harmony of two colors. The 
man who does not assent to the painter’s judgment is 


258 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


color-blind: his failure to perceive does not invalidate the 
reality or correctness of the painter’s perception. The 
man who does not hear the harmony or discord has no 
musical ear: his lack of ear does not invalidate the testi- 
mony of the musician, backed up by physical science and 
the mathematics. In like manner the man who fails to 
perceive the moral relation of one person toward another, 
as declared by persons of sound moral judgment, simply 
shows himself morally callous: his deadness does not de- 
stroy the reality of moral truth. 

The perception of moral relations improves from age to 
age, like the taste for music, not by mankind becoming 
more sensitive and therefore quicker to perceive, not by 
their being intellectually more enlightened on ethical sci- 
ence; but by their being trained to more frequent and dis- 
criminating ethical perception, and therefore becoming 
more capable of discrimination. Ethics thus becomes an 
expanding science, exactly as music is an expanding art. 
The foundations of ethics lie embedded in the foundations 
of human nature. Persons cannot exist without personal 
relations. Even if imagined to be isolated, they have re- 
lations to their Creator ; and, if they are brought into con- 
tact with each other, they must have moral relations 
toward one another. It is impossible, therefore, for us to 
exist as men — having an intellect capable of recognizing 
relations, sentiments capable of feeling them, and a will 
capable of choice and of action — without being thereby 
put under obligation, having duties toward each other, 
Standing in ethical relations. The heart will feel this, 
and the will act upon it, before the intellect has made it 
an object of conscious study. But in the course of his- 
tory experience will lead to the study of these moral rela- 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS 259 


tions, precisely as it has led to the study of music. The 
conclusions reached by sound reasoning will then, as in 
the case of music, confirm the voice of the feelings. 

It will be shown that obedience to moral duty will in 
the long run conduce to the individual and to the public 
welfare. It will be shown, also, that the whole spiritual 
universe, springing from the will, the wisdom, and love of 
an Infinite Being, is arranged in conformity with his 
designs, and that his design is in conformity with moral 
order. Therefore, our highest duty, springing from our 
relation to him, binds us to the performance of all lesser 
duties, springing from our relations to his creatures. 

It is manifest, therefore, that, while the idea of moral 
duty is perfectly simple and not capable of decomposition, 
the science of morals must be exceedingly complex. In 
a scientific treatment of morality we are obliged to con- 
sider not only the peculiar quality of moral relations, but 
also all the related and connected ideas. Every science 
has as its basis a very few simple conceptions, derived, in 
many cases, by abstraction from a vast number of indi- 
vidual instances. But in the scientific treatment of a par- 
ticular theme,— take geometry as a striking example,— 
although we begin with a few of the most general con- 
cepts, we draw from them by deduction a vast, almost:an 
unlimited, number of propositions and practical applica- 
tions. When the science is less strictly deductive,— as, for 
example, music,— the number of concepts which we are 
obliged to introduce may be greater and the number of 
deductions from them smaller; but it still remains true 
that the simplicity of the most general concepts is not at 
all inconsistent with great complexity in the details of the 
science and of its practical applications. The funda- 


260 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


mental conceptions of ethics are very simple, but they 
have great breadth and great depth. They embrace all in- 
telligent beings, and reach to every possible relation of 
one intelligent being to another. Hence ethical science 
is capable of being mutilated and misrepresented in a great 
variety of ways. For a full comprehension of its funda- 
mental concepts or postulates a rich experience is evi- 
dently required; and not only a rich experience, but a clear 
insight into psychological truths,— logical power, also, and 
freedom from prepossessions and prejudices. And every 
gift would be in vain without a special aptitude for grasp- 
ing and feeling the force of ethical conceptions. Here, as 
in every other branch of human inquiry, a native aptitude 
and a special training must be united in order to the 
highest success. In our own day even the mathematics 
have been drawn into the regions of doubtful debate, and 
the fundamental axioms and simple propositions of Euclid 
denied their true validity. What wonder, then, that ethics, 
dealing with the most complex conceptions ever formed 
by the human mind, have been a matter of debate and 
divided opinion ? 

Yet in one respect there has been a remarkable progress 
toward unanimity. Practically, the sense of duty becomes 
clearer and clearer with regard to all matters of social 
and commercial intercourse ; and general benevolence or 
philanthropy, which at the beginning of the Christian 
era was recognized as a virtue by very few persons except 
the Christian teachers, is now put forth as the highest 
duty by nearly every writer who touches on ethical ques- 
tions. This practical progress in ethics is similar to the 
growth of music as an art, which was neither hindered nor 
advanced by the rival theories of Pythagoras and Aristox- 


THE FIELD OF ETHICS 261 


enes. And as the progress of science has finally demon- 
strated, even to those devoid of musical ear, that Pythago- 
ras’ ideal mystic theory is true, and that Aristoxenes’ 
materialistic association theory, maintained by both Dar- 
wins, is false, so I think there can be no doubt that Epi- 
curean, utilitarian, and materialistic views of duty, will, by 
the progress of science and the development of ethical 
thought, be sent to oblivion with those of Aristoxenes ; 
while the idealist view of duty will become universally ad- 
mitted, and utility will be seen to be only one of the tests 
of right, not its ultimate basis. 


It 
THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS. 


Ir has become fashionable in some quarters to say that 
morals are but a matter of feeling or of custom. Ihave 
in the previous lecture defined them as based upon the 
perception of certain relations between persons. In order 
to show that this basis is a solid foundation on which to 
build a real science, I wish in this second lecture to vin- 
dicate the trustworthy character of human perceptions. 
and therefore will occupy the greater part of the hour 
in a metaphysical examination of the validity of human 
thought and the reality of human knowledge. For it is 
manifest that our views of ethics must be modified by our 
views of psychology; and it is further manifest that 
our views of psychology are inseparably connected with 
our ideas concerning the nature of knowledge, and of 
logical operations. It may be taken as self-evident that 
thought deals not with things in themselves, but with 
our apprehension of them. It is almost a tautological 
proposition that the process of reasoning does not deal 
with things, but with our ideas of things. In this sense 
and to this extent all knowledge may be said to be rela- 
tive. Furthermore, our objects of thought are appre- 
hended only as they stand related either to one another 
or to us, so that knowledge may be said to be relative 
not only because it is a knowledge of our ideas rather 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 263 


than of things, but also because our ideas lay hold of the 
relations of objects rather than of the objects them- 
selves. The finiteness of our intellect is still further 
manifest when we remember that in all our representa- 
tions of objects we grasp only a part of their relations 
or properties. Even the simplest mathematical concep- 
tion, that of a circle, for example, involves more relations 
than have ever been distinctly pictured to the human 
mind. Hence in every human judgment there is the 
possibility that something important is omitted from the 
consideration. 

It has sometimes been inferred from these considera- 
tions of the finitude and relativity of human knowledge 
that no knowledge of reality is possible, but I take this 
to be a far more sweeping conclusion than the premises 
warrant. It is true that I know things only in their rela- 
tions, that I have no knowledge and no conception of any- 
thing absolute and in itself. But, because I know things 
only in their relations, it by no means follows that I do 
not know things in their relations. Those who push their 
conclusion from relativity to the extreme of making rela- 
tion all that is knowable, seem to forget that the percep- 
tion of a relation necessarily implies the perception of 
two objects in relation. When J affirm the real existence 
of my own soul and of my own body, or of mass and 
motion in the universe, or of space and of time, or of an 
intelligent Creator to whom my spirit bears some resem- 
blance, I am not affirming that I know any of these en- 
tities and substances in any other way than in their 
mutual relations. External or sense perception gives me 
primarily simply a state of consciousness, but in this 
state of consciousness is involved the perception of a 


264. POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


relation between myself and the external world. In 
affirming this, I am not affirming that I have any other 
knowledge of the external world than its capability of 
exciting the sensation in me. All that a sensible man 
can mean by calling the grass green is that it is capable 
in the light of common day of producing a certain sensa- 
tion in the man who has a normal eye for color. But this 
is not saying nothing. On the contrary, modern physical 
experiments have shown that in this sensation of green 
there is an indication of a vast number of other time and 
space relations, capable of being reduced to the manifes- 
tation of various chemical and physical phenomena. The 
perception is simply that of a sensation of color: the con- 
ception is that of the likeness of this color to that pro- 
duced by other objects, and its unlikeness to various other 
colors. From the comparison of this concept with those 
derived from other sensations new inferences concerning 
relations are safely drawn, and optical, chemical, and 
mechanical truths inferred. 

As it is impossible to discuss ethical questions without 
some presupposed psychology, and some careful definition 
of psychological terms, I will, before going further, define 
the sense in which I use certain words. In the olden 
day, the word “perception” had among philosophers the 
same breadth of meaning which it now has in ordinary 
conversation. By perception we generally signify the act 
of seizing a single intellectual object of thought. Thus 
perception may be defined as a simple or indivisible act 
of intellectual consciousness. By the power of attention 
we can at any moment concentrate the mind upon any 
part. of the field of consciousness. When the part of 
the field thus separated is single, simple, indivisible, then 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 265 


the act of consciousness which recognizes that part of the 
field is a simple perception. The act of attention by 
which the mind is concentrated upon that is entirely an- 
other affair. The perception is simply the indivisible act 
of intellectual consciousness. Reid, and after him Kant, 
limited the meaning of the word to acts of perception 
through sensation,— through direct contact with the ex- 
ternal world. But I prefer to keep to the old philosophi- 
cal meaning, which, I think, is the meaning in ordinary 
conversation. A perception is an indivisible act of con- 
sciousness, such as the perception of light or darkness, 
heat or cold, such as the perception of the truth or false- 
hood of a fundamental proposition in mathematics or in 
ethics. 

But, although perception is an indivisible act of con- 
sciousness, it always has two sides, inseparable, and yet 
separated (as Hamilton expresses it) by the whole diam- 
eter of being. For in the act of perception is implied the 
actor who perceives and the thing perceived. The word 
“actor” may be open to objection, and yet perception is 
not wholly passive. The percipient must be aroused out 
of pure passivity to at least a faint degree of attention in 
order to a clear perception. The thing perceived is, so 
far as perception is concerned, purely passive. Because 
perception has its two sides, the percipient and the thing 
perceived (which I may call the percept), it has been has- 
tily assumed that all perception is merely the perception 
of the relation between the percipient and the percept. 
But this is a grave mistake. It is confounding the fact 
of perception with our perception of that fact: it is con- 
founding consciousness with self-consciousness. Percep- 
tion is an individual act of consciousness, perceiving the 


266 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


percept. But that percept, or thing perceived, is not nec- 
essarily the act of perception. When the act of percep- 
tion is itself the percept, then consciousness has become 
self-consciousness. The perception has become, in this 
case, what Leibnitz calls apperception, which is only a 
species in the genus, perception. 

Using perception in the broad sense which I have 
given it in my definition, and percept in the peculiar 
sense of the thing perceived, we may say that percep- 
tion, the indivisible act of consciousness, always implies 
a percipient and a percept. The percipient is the con- 
scious self designated in philosophy as the “ego,” the 
“me.” The percept, on the other side, may be any one of 
the indivisible elements of universal knowledge. 

The percept may, for example, be a simple, external 
sensation of sight, hearing, touch. It is to the percep- 
tion of these external sensations that Reid and Kant 
have confined the meaning of the word. In general, two 
acts of judgment accompany the external sensation. A 
simple judgment is the perception of a relation. The 
first judgment upon a sensation usually is that it is not 
me. The validity of this judgment can be denied only 
by denying the possibility of direct perception, for noth- 
ing can be more emphatic than the testimony of con- 
sciousness declaring that external sensation is not a part 
of ourselves. The perception is our act, but the thing 
perceived is something not ourselves producing in us the 
sensation, 

The second judgment which usually accompanies ex- 
ternal sensation is the perception of its likeness or un- 
likeness to some remembered sensation. This takes us a 
step further in the mystery of knowledge. It is the per- 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 267 


ception of an abstract idea or conception. Thus we pro- 
nounce a certain color green, which is but the declaration 
of its identity or similarity to previous sensations, and 
affirms nothing whatever concerning the mechanical or 
chemical nature of the object producing the sensation. 
We may rise to the comparison of abstract with abstract, 
and in each case the relation between two percepts or 
concepts is itself a new percept. Thus the whole process 
of reasoning is simply an intellectual arrangement of con- 
cepts in such manner that we may proceed from direct 
self-evident percepts as premises, through a series of self- 
evident relations, each a direct percept, until we arrive 
at the conclusion. The word “intuition” was, in the 
older philosophy, used very much in the sense in which 
I am now using the word “ perception,” — the sense of di- 
rect or immediate vision; but it is now confined by most 
writers to the perception of other things than those of 
outward sense. Etymologically, however, all direct per- 
ceptions might be called intuitions, 

We may divide percepts — that is, things perceived — 
into two categories, ontological and relative. First among 
the ontological percepts are those given in apperception ; 
namely, the existence of a percipient and a non-percip- 
lent. This is equivalent to the recognition of the exist- 
ence of a “me” and a “not me,” a “self” anda “not 
self.” In the further expansion of our knowledge we rec- 
ognize the existence of other intelligences than our own, 
and extend this first division of beings into the classes of 
the conscious and the unconscious; that is, percipient 
and non-percipient. But in the progress of knowledge we 
furthermore recognize the existence of divisions in the 
unconscious. The cause of sensations, which at first we 


268 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


consider the ‘“‘not me,’ becomes to us simply masses in 
motion. When we attempt to explain to ourselves mass 
and motion, we arrive at the simple percepts of space and 
time, which I, at least, in vain endeavor to elevate into 
concepts; that is, I in vain endeavor to make them rela- 
tive percepts. Clarke, following Newton’s suggestions, 
would make time and space the eternity and omnipres- 
ence of the Infinite Mind. Many of the supposed fol- 
lowers of Kant have endeavored to reduce space and time 
to modes of human thought. Comte and his school 
would — like the ancient Romans, as described by Cicero 
— reduce them to mere abstract concepts of matter. But 
I think that the general judgment will agree with me in 
refusing to carry our analysis of unconscious being further 
than mass and motion, time and space. 

Percepts of relation are by far more numerous: they 
embrace all the indivisible elements of universal knowl- 
edge. A large part of philosophy and science is occupied 
with defining and separating them. They may be classi- 
fied according to the ontological department to which 
they most strictly appertain. Thus, they may be algebrai- 
cal; that is, relating principally to succession and time. 
They may be geometrical; that is, relating principally to 
the order of coexistence in space. They may be material, 
dealing with motion, not as an abstract conception, but 
as existing in mass or molecule. And, finally, they may 
be spiritual, discovered by a close interrogation of con- 
sciousness and by observation of our relation to our fel- 
low-men. In all these cases the perception of which I 
am speaking is, it must be remembered, an indivisible act 
~of consciousness. It tells directly only the one thing,— 
the percept seen in the perception, and which can be seen 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 269 


in no other way. The inferences from this percept may, 
however, be exceedingly numerous, and may be of two 
different characters, direct and indirect. [I am, however, 
using the words “direct”’ and “indirect” in a much larger 
sense than usual. 

What I wish to call emphatically to your attention is 
that the percept may not only be used as a direct start- 
ing-point or direct link in the chain of reasoning, but in 
our modern thought a direct percept becomes in numer- 
ous cases an indirect sign of truths which cannot be con- 
nected with it by any process of reasoning, but only by 
the testimony of a constant experience. For example, 
there is no direct connection of logical sequence between 
the sensation of yellow, and table salt. And yet it is 
easy to show that a certain shade of yellow gives, under 
certain circumstances, a convincing proof of the presence 
of salt in the air. This result, remember, has not been 
reached by any direct reasoning from the sensation of 
yellow, nor can it be demonstrated by any argument from 
the sensation other than this: that salt is the most uni- 
versally diffused form of sodium; that sodium at a cer- 
tain heat produces a certain shade of yellow ; that no other 
substance at that temperature is known to produce pre- 
cisely that shade, and therefore, when an alcohol flame 
contains in its colors that precise shade of yellow, it in- 
dicates the presence of sodium, and thus presumably of 
salt. Color, therefore, which is constantly spoken of as 
a mere subjective thing, a sensation without any signifi- 
cance except in the eye that perceives it, is shown to be 
to the eye that can appreciate it a perfectly trustworthy 
indication of many truths which can by no means be 
evolved from an analysis of the sensation. 


270 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


A certain shade of color indicates a certain number of 
vibrations in the retina, a certain number of vibrations 
therefore in the ether, a certain number therefore in the 
substance exciting the ether, which number indicates 
first the temperature of the substance, and secondly in- 
dicates also its chemical nature, and suggests thus its 
origin and its capabilities. All this varied information is 
given by a sensation of color, and given so accurately and 
with such precision and certainty that in some of the arts 
and manufactures vast pecuniary results are staked upon 
the information thus received. Fifty years ago the sen- 
sation of color was supposed to be the least trustworthy 
of sensations; and the case of the color-blind has fre- 
quently been appealed to, even within ten years, as a proof 
of the worthlessness of all subjective impressions. And 
yet the case of the color-blind proves nothing of the sort. 

The manufacturers of sugar, of Bessemer steel, of edged 
tools, and so on, rely with absolute confidence upon indi- 
cations given by color, and never are deceived. Thus, 
also, with the sensation of harmony. For many years con- 
sidered as the indication only of some accidental associa- 
tions, it has been proved to be the unerring index to 
arithmetical and geometrical harmonies in the movements 
of the air. I might illustrate from other sensations than 
those of color and harmony the same truth; namely, that 
an indecomposable percept, whose content in conscious- 
ness is simply that of a sensation or a feeling, may be 
proved by a course of indirect but perfectly satisfactory 
evidence to be an infallible indication of the existence of 
many conditions in the external world not appealing to 
our senses, but capable of being sharply presented to our 
intellect. 


7" 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 271 


I say that this is often the case. And it is so often the 
case that we may assume with perfect safety and entire 
confidence that every percept gives an absolutely trust- 
worthy testimony. The only questions are, first, What 
rmythe percept ? and, secondly, What is its testimony? In 
answering the first question, What is the percept? the 
difficulty lies in the analysis of consciousness. A percept 
is an indivisible act of consciousness; and, if we care- 
lessly assume the simplicity and indivisibility of that 
which is really complex, we are of course liable to be led 
into further errors. In like manner, when endeavoring 
to trace (either directly using that percept as a premise, 
or indirectly using it only as an index) the remote conse- 
quences or web of truths to which the original percept 
bears testimony, we are at every step liable to mistake a 
complex inference for a simple percept. Just as the eye 
is sometimes dim, so the attention, or internal power of 
sight, is sometimes dull. And just as the eye sometimes 
winks, and may wink at the critical moment and lose 
some instantaneous perception which it might otherwise 
have gained, so the internal power of sight or attention 
is occasionally subject to slips, temporary relaxations, or 
oversights. This is a familiar fact, which may weaken 
our confidence in the first result of our thought, but 
which ought to have no effect whatever upon our accept- 
ance of conclusions reached after repeated careful review 
and criticism by reasoners of ability. The relativity of 
human knowledge does not render human knowledge un- 
certain. When we have carefully analyzed a perception, 
and reached an ultimate indivisible percept, we have, at 
least, reached a true relation, and, even if the terms of 
that relation are themselves relations, they also are true 


272 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


relations ; and in the ultimate analysis we must arrive at 
ontological percepts,—things which are. The universe 
was not built upon a lie; and even the insane affirmation 
that all our knowledge is deceptive contradicts itself by 
assuming that the speaker knows it to be deceptive,— 
knows, therefore, something in which he is not deceived. 

The perception of relations must lead to the perception 
of beings related, or-at least to the perception that such 
beings exist. All thought assumes the existence of the 
thinker. A man may in terms deny his own existence, 
but he cannot imagine himself already non-existent. In 
every act of perception is the recognition of one’s self as 
perceiving. That is to say, perception is constantly ac- 
companied by apperception, or self-consciousness. Now 
we may not be able to see other souls with the directness 
with which we see ourselves, and yet we have as absolute 
a knowledge of the existence of other men as we have of 
our own. The existence of the material world about us is 
no more sure to us than the existence of the human race. 
Nay, if there be any difference, it is in favor of our cer- 
tainty of the existence of men. If there be any difference 
between two certainties, the existence of the percipient is 
more sure than that of the percept. The percept may be 
merely phenomenal. 

Nor can there be to a careful thinker any doubt of the 
existence of God. The first glance at the outward world 
proclaims its essential unity ; and the more thorough the 
investigations of science, the more clearly that unity is 
brought to light. The whole universe has a single cause, 
whose existence is avouched to us by every act of thought. 
‘But the universe is manifestly in a constant condition of 
change. Every fact of sensation proves that, according 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 273 


to the acute remark of Hobbes, “unchanging sensation 
would be no sensation at all.” In the single unique 
cause of the universe, therefore, lies this constant power 
of producing constant change. Mind, intellect, person- 
ality, name it as you will,— that which is revealed to us in 
our own self, or ego,— is the only conceivable cause which 
contains in itself this self-determining power, this moral 
freedom. The Hebrew Scriptures contain in their first 
chapter the announcement of this greatest, most impor- 
tant truth at which the human mind has ever arrived, and 
which the whole course of philosophy and science more 
and more strongly confirms. Man was made in the image 
of God. In our powers of perception, of feeling, and of 
action, we have the only conceivable type of the cause 
of the universe. God is a person, and has made the uni- 
verse to subserve the needs of persons. In this likeness 
to him we have the pledge of human immortality. This 
I understand to be the argument that Jesus used with the 
Sadducees. It was no quibble upon the tense of a verb, 
but a solid argument built upon the intercourse between 
man and God. Every discovery of physical science there- 
fore, being, as Joseph Henry has said, the reception of an 
intelligible answer to an intelligent question addressed 
to the Author of the universe, adds new weight to that 
reply by which our Lord silenced his cavilling questioners, 

It will be seen that it is impossible for us to imagine an 
isolated person. The attempt to imagine God without his 
creatures is, of course, utterly beyond the strength of 
a finite imagination. It is equally impossible to imagine 
a man alone, even were we to take the sublime parable of 
the temptation and fall of man asa history. Adam, be- 
fore the creation of Eve, was in the Divine Omnipresence. 


274 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


The thought of God can never long be excluded from the 
human mind. No tribe of savages has been shown to be 
entirely without the conception of invisible beings. Even 
those who attempt to account for the rise of such ideas 
by the existence of shadows, reflected images, or vivid 
dreams, must admit the presence of the ideas among 
every tribe of men; and the moment that men make any 
approach toward philosophy and reflection they assign the 
operations of nature to the action of spiritual beings. 

But, further than this, no man has ever shaken off en- 
tirely the conception of his fellow-men. Selkirk quar- 
relled with his captain, and asked to be left on an unin- 
habited island ; but he supposed the island was frequently 
visited by ships, and for nearly four years he kept upa 
daily anxious watch for the approach of human beings. 
For the whole of that time therefore he stood in conscious 
relations to his fellow-men, and expected to be again 
in direct communication with them. When Defoe built 
from Selkirk’s and Serrano’s adventures his story of 
Crusoe, he could not paint his shipwrecked man as having 
lost all hope of rescue, and was even compelled, before his 
rescue, to give him a companion. We may safely say 
that, as the person is the highest form of being, so per- 
sonal relations are the highest form of relations. The 
great discoveries of modern science are valuable because 
of their personal relations, because of the testimony 
which they bear to the power of the human mind and to 
the reality of its intercourse with the Divine Mind, 
and because of the means they furnish to men for 
aiding each other, and for penetrating still further into 
the plans of the Creator. All other sciences are, of 
course, more or less historical, or else psychological; and 


THE VALIDITY OF MORAL PERCEPTIONS 275 


it need not be said that their interest and value arises 
from their dealings with personal relations. The supreme 
cause of the universe is a Person; his highest creations 
are persons; and, therefore, personal relations are the 
highest of all relations. | 

In contemplating the relation between two persons 
we shall find very numerous fundamental perceptions ; 
among others that which pertains exclusively to the sub- 
ject of this course of lectures. Every person standing in 
the presence of another person has rights and owes duties, 
The conception of right, and that of rights, are two simple 
perceptions which always accompany each other, at least 
when we consider finite persons; nor is it at all clear that 
any exception should be made in respect to our relations 
with God, 


IIT. 
THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS. 


WHENEVER the idea of two persons in each other’s pres- 
ence comes into our minds, it awakens more or less dis- 
tinctly the idea of relative right and duty. It is a neces- 
sity of thought that we should conceive each person as 
owing something to the other, and as having a claim upon 
the other. This concept of right and duty is a percept in 
the sense in which I have defined the latter word: it is an 
indivisible act of consciousness. As such, it is trust- 
worthy: it means something. It is not simply a fiction 
of our imagination. It is true that in one sense it exists 
only in our thought, because, although a percept, it is en- 
closed in a concept,—.e., it is a relation between our con- 
ceptions of the persons; but it answers to, it denotes the 
existence of, an actual relation of the persons themselves. 
And, although one and indivisible, it may be regarded 
under various aspects. Seen in an intellectual light, it is 
a truth. As it awakens feeling, it contains an element of 
beauty, more beautiful than that of outward form and 
color. Regarded in its results, it makes part of a perfect 
idea of utility. Nevertheless, in its own peculiar aspect it 
is more than truth, than beauty or utility: it is right, be- 
cause it is right. We may laugh at Cicero for reiterating 
perpetually in his Offices that we must do right, simply 
because it is right; but Cicero’s thought was not errone- 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 277 


ous. Looked at on the side of the will, on the side of 
action, on the conative side, we ave to do right, because it 
is right. Nor is the meaning of the word “right” to be 
sought etymologically in Horne Tooke’s fashion: we are 
not to think that whatever is directed is right. That 
which God directs is not made, but only shown to be 
right by his directing it. His wisdom and holiness make 
it certain that what he orders is right, that it conforms 
to the highest wisdom and conduces to the highest good. 
The sense of duty, of obligation, is simple, primitive; not 
capable of analysis into any simpler elements. Neverthe- 
less, it may be put under different forms; that is, con- 
templated from different points of view. As pure feeling, 
it is the sense of obligation, it is the categorical impera- 
tive. To the intellect it is the perception of a relation 
between two persons. Asa motive addressed to the de- 
sires, it is an assertion of the highest good. From mak- 
ing this latter fact over-important, utilitarian schemes of 
ethics arise, to which we will again allude in future 
lectures. 

Upon the perception of a relation between two persons 
the sense of obligation is awakened, the idea of duty 
becomes visible, conscience utters its imperative “Thou 
shalt.” It may be asked, “ And what if we disobey?” I 
answer that all life is subject to conditions, and is depend- 
ent upon compliance with those conditions. The intellect 
seizes certain truths, and proceeds in its reasoning accord- 
ing to certain laws. If a man neglect self-evident truths 
or violates the conditions of logic, he cannot attain correct 
conclusions. Ina similar way, if the laws of beauty, har- 
mony, and proportion are violated, it is impossible for a 
man to attain the highest enjoyment for his esthetic nat- 


278 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


ure. If he violates the mechanical laws, or the chemical, 
or the commercial, or any other conditions of success, he 
must suffer the restraints and inconveniences of failure in 
his attempted actions. And, if a man act contrary to the 
decisions of conscience, to the decisions of sound judg- 
ment acting upon personal relations, involving rights and 
duties, then he is criminal. He has not fulfilled the con- 
ditions on which alone the highest life is possible. All 
failure to attain the highest success must be accompanied 
by more or less pain. There is not only a loss, but a 
positive shock, which arouses the healthy soul to new care 
and diligence. Even the exceptions to this law are more 
apparent than real. An act of folly or a foolish speech 
not only fails to attain the effects of wise counsel, but 
usually brings vexatious self-reproach. The man who 
does not enjoy harmony and beauty not only loses the 
pleasures of taste, but is frequently mortified by some 
sense of his deficiency. And every criminal, every man 
who neglects his duty and disregards the rights of others, 
condemns himself. His self-reproach is not always so 
bitter as his acts deserve. But, although neither sharp 
nor bitter, it is heavy. The wrong-doer almost invariably 
has a dread of some coming chastisement. Accompany- 
ing the sense of rights and duties, we have also a sense of 
good and ill desert. The feeling that the man who does 
wrong deserves pain and _ suffering,—this feeling is so 
strong that it is to some a valid argument for immor- 
tality. 

The proper domain of the science of ethics lies in the 
voluntary actions of persons standing in relation to each 
other. But in our human nature voluntary action always 
springs from a feeling, and is founded upon a thought. 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 279 


The person is a unit ; and in the unity of consciousness are 
always involved these three aspects,— thought, feeling, and 
will. The errors of ethical systems have arisen largely 
from the neglect of this triple aspect of personality. For 
example, the theory of the moral sense has built too exclu- 
sively upon the emotions awakened by the perceptions of 
rights and duties, to the neglect of the intellectual condi- 
tions upon which the conceptions of right and duty rest. 
Again, those who have defined right as mere obedience 
to law have looked at the will alone, neglecting both the 
sentiment and the intellectual analysis of the reasons for 
law. And those who have sought to refer all duty to the 
will of God have only added the element of emotion to 
that of action, and have neglected to observe that the will 
of God must act in accordance with his perfect wisdom 
and perfect holiness. 

In other systems, the errors still arise from an imper- 
fect recognition of the facts of our moral consciousness. 
The attempt has frequently been made to identify the 
right with the good, and again the good with the pleas- 
ant. The coarsest form of this theory would make the 
happiness of the individual the measure of right. In this 
view, happiness is not to be divided into kinds ; but each 
man is allowed to choose his own form of pleasure, and 
that is right for him which will in the long run give him the 
greatest amount of his own chosen kind of happiness. A 
slight improvement upon this absurd view allows differ- 
ences of rank in the kind of happiness, and makes it a 
man’s duty to seek the highest kind as well as the largest 
amount. From this purely selfish conception of self-inter- 
est, well understood, we arise to the highest form of the 
utilitarian theory,— the conception of the greatest good to. 


280 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


the greatest number. It is, however, perceived by mod- 
ern advocates of such views that something is lacking, if 
we attempt to make the greatest good to the greatest 
number a practical rule for deciding what is right. The 
moral judgment does not declare that such a course is use- 
ful and therefore right. In many cases, at least, the pro- 
cession is in the opposite direction. That is, we see a 
course to be right, and conclude that it is therefore 
useful. 

To explain this, the utilitarian brings in first the action 
of the association of ideas. The child, who has been 
repeatedly forbidden to do an act, presently acquires the 
habit of feeling that the act is prohibited, without remem- 
bering whence the prohibition came. He thus mistakes 
the feeling for an instinctive command of conscience. 
But, secondly, when the associationist is pressed with facts 
which show that the child feels this sense of wrong before 
he has been taught, he replies that it is an inherited effect 
of association in his ancestors. According to that school 
of thinkers there are no such things as general axioms, or 
axiomatic truths, except such as have been formed by a 
tedious induction from external observations, extending 
not only over the whole history of the human race, but 
of its brute ancestry for millions of ages. 

Notwithstanding the high reputation of many of those 
who have accepted this revival of materialistic doctrine, 
I cannot look upon it as anything else than an absurd 
dream, which fascinated me in my youth, when I was 
familiar with it in the attractive garb in which it was pre- 
sented by Erasmus Darwin, but which I threw off with 
other childish fancies as soon as I became a man. The 
writings of Herbert Spencer, one of the most famous of 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 281 


the modern writers who take this view of ethics, are full 
of the most manifest false inferences. Whatever he may 
be in his wonderful grasp of knowledge, in the ingenuity 
of his theories, in the magniloquence of his definitions, he 
is certainly exceedingly weak in every attempt at argu- 
ment. 

But, whatever assumption may be made concerning the 
origin of our moral ideas, these utilitarian theories are in- 
consistent with their present nature. It may be true, for 
example, that honesty is the best policy; but no man can 
admit for an instant that the converse is a safe proposi- 
tion. The man who should attempt to make policy, even 
the best policy, his guide in life, would run great risks of 
sacrificing his integrity to his supposed interests ; and, 
even should he escape this, and actually do the things that 
are honest, yet, if it were known by his fellow-men that he 
did so simply from policy, they would not, they could 
not, give him credit for honesty, but only for prudence. 

The true relation between that which is good and that 
which is right may be shown from a consideration of that 
definition of pleasure which I have seen ascribed to Aris- 
totle,—‘‘ that pleasure is the sensation arising from the un- 
impeded action of any faculty.” Whatever power we are 
using, the use of it imparts pleasure. A right course of 
action brings into exercise the best powers of the soul. 
It, therefore, gives the highest happiness. But if we aim 
directly at that happiness, make it the end and object of 
action, then our action, being no longer guided by the 
contemplation of right relations to our fellow-men, is no 
longer right, and therefore fails to give us the happiness 
at which we aim. 

The same result is reached if, instead of looking at the 


282 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


idea of pleasure, we look at the cognate idea of good. 
W. R. Alger has put the matter in a very neat form of 
statement. ‘The good of any being,” he says, “is the ful- 
filment of its functions.” You perceive that this definition 
is cognate with that of Jouffroy, who says that the duty 
of any being is to fulfil the purpose for which it was 
made. But simply to say that good lies in the fulfilment 
of functions fails to bring out the idea of duty which is 
contained in Jouffroy’s statement. Therefore, in order to 
lift his definition above the merely vegetable and animal 
planes of existence, and give it its moral aspects, Mr. 
Alger enlarges it by saying “that moral good is the fulfil- 
ment of functions under such conditions and by such 
methods as to lead to the universal and eternal fulfilment 
of functions.” We may like or dislike the form of words 
in which he has stated it, or the briefer form in which 
Jouffroy puts it; but I can see no other end at which a 
truly rational investigation of the matter can arrive. Per- 
sonal identity lies at the foundation of all thought. Per- 
sonality is the only real, enduring, substantial being. We 
human beings are bound to each other in such wise that 
no individual of the race is without a personal relation to 
us; and we all stand in personal relations to that One Per- 
sonality which stands at the centre of the universe, cre- 
ating and sustaining all phenomenal existence. There is, 
therefore, no sound ethics except that which coincides 
with Christian ethics,— which teach that the whole duty 
of man lies in becoming reconciled to God, and in striv- 
ing to be a coworker with him for the benefit of the race. 

It is objected to the intuitional view of morals that 
men’s ideas of duty differ, and that they change. It is 
said that were there an intuition of right relations, this 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 283 


could not be the case. We may answer, in the first place, 
that ideas of duty and of right have changed less than 
any other ideas; that the changes in moral science have 
been smaller and slower than those in any other science, 
not because the science has remained imperfect longer 
than others, but because it earlier attained to a compara- 
tive perfection. Ethics, however, is not so advantageously 
compared with the sciences as with the fine arts. It is 
so directly and completely practical that it might indeed 
be defined as the art of right living, rather than the sci- 
ence of right relations. Now, in the fine arts the validity 
of our intuitions and esthetic judgments has been, as I 
have said in previous lectures, marvellously vindicated 
by the use and discipline to which they have been sub- 
jected. From the simple conception of space, as consti- 
tuted of points, and capable of being divided into lines 
and surfaces, a vast science of geometry has been built 
up. When this science was eagerly and successfully cul- 
tivated at Athens, the arts of sculpture, of drawing, and 
of architecture, also flourished. In these arts, the artist 
did not proceed upon those axioms on which the geome- 
ter built his demonstrations, but upon an esthetic judg- 
ment of proportion,—so just and true that the whole 
world has acknowledged the perfection of the results 
which it produced, yet so delicate and subtle that it 
eluded intellectual analysis for more than two thousand 
years. The zsthetic judgment of harmony of colors has 
not yet been thus analyzed with perfect success. But the 
history of the art of music gives a more complete vindi- 
cation of intuitional theories than even that of archi- 
tecture. 

A musical person needs no intellectual confirmation of 


284 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


his musical judgment. His ear is supreme arbiter to him. 
It declares the voice to be in or out of tune, to be of 
agreeable or disagreeable quality. It declares a progres- 
sion of chords to be good or to be bad, it affirms the adap- 
tation or want of adaptation of the music to the words or 
to the occasion; and there is no appeal from its judg- 
ments, unless we may say that the ears of a majority of 
musical persons are a full bench to which we may appeal 
from a single judge. Nor is there any satisfactory way of 
accounting for these musical impressions by means of the 
association of ideas or the inheritance of associations. 
Erasmus Darwin attempted it, but it was a total failure in 
his day; and recent more elaborate attempts have been 
equally futile. That theory of Aristoxenes will not stand, 
while that of Pythagoras is more and more clearly proved 
by every new investigation. The musical judgment of the 
European race has been made clearer, more discriminating 
and accurate by centuries of practice in the art of music. 
And this accuracy is demonstrated to persons not musical 
by mathematical investigations of the vibrations produced 
in the air during the performance of the music. 

The man of fine moral endowment admits no appeal 
from his moral sense, any more than the musical man from 
his ear. He decides whether an action would be base or 
honorable, whether a state of mind is right or wrong, 
whether a state of heart is reasonable or unreasonable, 
without any appeal to reason, or experience, or calculation 
of consequences to himself or to others. In many cases 
no such appeal would be possible. The consequences 
would not be capable of calculation or estimation. But, 
as the musical judgment has been improved simply by 
centuries of careful practice, and by the increasing com- 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 285 


plexity of esthetic emotions awakened in an increasing 
civilization, so the moral judgment is from century to 
century improved in the mass of men by a constant exer- 
cise in the increasing complexity of social relations, and 
under the influence of the high ideals of Christianity. No 
man can measure the influence exerted by the great mas- 
ters of music upon the musical taste of the public. A 
refined taste among those not given wholly to the pur- 
suit of the art cannot possibly be acquired except through 
the presentation of models derived from the inspiration 
of genius. All art is more or less imitative: it is at least 
stimulated by examples. The first model is given by nat- 
ure. After that the progress becomes more rapid in pro- 
portion to the labors of men of special genius. 

Thus Gluck, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, 
not only create a multitude of conscious copyists, but create 
a still greater multitude of those who are unconsciously 
stimulated, elevated, and guided by their labors. Nor is 
this at all inconsistent with the fact that musical sense 
is an innate gift, and that its judgments are not dependent 
on associations of ideas, either personal or inherited. 

Neither can any man measure the influence upon the 
moral judgment exercised by the presentation of high 
ideals through poets, prophets, and apostles, or suggested 
by the presence of the actual realization of high ideals in 
living examples. Nor is this influence inconsistent with 
the fact that the moral sense is an innate gift, deciding 
upon right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable, pre- 
cisely as the eye decides upon shades of color or the ear 
upon differences of tone. 

But, as the judgment of the eye and the ear may be 
confirmed by the testimony of other faculties, to which, 


286 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


nevertheless, they would not yield as to authorities, so 
the judgment of the moral sense, although independent 
and having exclusive jurisdiction in its own realm, may, 
nevertheless, be confirmed by various forms of inductive 
reasoning. Moreover, we may say that, as it is reason- 
able for a man of feeble eye for color to abide, in the 
selection of his clothes or in the furnishing of his house, 
by the judgment of those who have a recognized ability 
and taste in color, and as it is reasonable for a man 
without musical ear to accept the judgment of the musi- 
cal world concerning points on which the musical world 
is agreed, so it is reasonable for the man whose sense of 
honor is blunt, or whose perception of the importance 
of moral distinctions is dull, to accept in ethical matters 
the judgment of those men who are conceded to be men 
of honor and integrity, and of keen moral discrimination. 
We expect men to accept their judgment ; and the reason- 
ableness of this expectation may be shown by various 
lines of inductive argument. 

The utility of obedience to generally recognized moral 
law is admitted both by those who maintain that we have 
an intuitive sense of moral distinctions and by all the 
school of utilitarian moralists. The utility of right ac- 
tions may therefore be considered settled if any human 
opinion can be settled. When, therefore, a question arises 
in the mind of one in whom the moral sense is blunt 
whether a proposed action would be right or wrong, he 
may, in some cases, decide by considering carefully which 
course of action would be of the most general ana perma- 
nent benefit, were it generally adopted. Thus the percep- 
tion of utility may sometimes assist in leading to the per- 
ception of right. Usually, the benefit is just the other 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS 287 


way. A man always knows which course of action will 
be most useful, if he can learn which would be approved 
as right by the soundest Christian moralist. 

Again, the reality and value of moral distinctions may 
be inferred, even by one who has not keen moral percep- 
tions, if he will notice how universal is the testimony of 
those who are acknowledged to have a high moral sense 
to the high quality of the pleasure resulting from strict 
adherence to the moral law. Both Christian and heathen 
literature are full of testimonies to the peace and joy of 
a good conscience. And, although our private experience 
in our intercourse with men may have shown us many in- 
stances of those whose consciences seem seared, and who 
do not suffer from remorse, it has also shown us no faces 
more expressive of inward peace and profound happiness 
than the faces of those whom we have known to be most 
faithful to their moral convictions. 

The universal consent of all nations, and even of the 
most savage tribes, to the existence of moral distinctions 
is a strong presumptive argument for the reality of such 
distinctions. It is true that, in barbarous tribes, practices 
are sometimes considered innocent which civilized na- 
tions condemn. Nevertheless, even the most savage tribes 
recognize the obligation of some of the moral laws ac- 
knowledged by civilized people. This is analogous to 
the fact that, although barbarous people admit Dorian, 
Phrygian, and Lydian modes of music, which we reject, 
they nevertheless also admit the pleasing nature of some 
of the fundamental chords; and their melodies move 
through the same intervals as ours. Even the birds 
usually whistle in a diatonic scale. But the science of 
acoustics carefully applied to the investigation of musical 


288 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


statics has proved to us that the Chinese music is not 
positively bad, but only relatively inferior. That which 
the savage finds good in music is proved to be numeri- 
cally good, although not so good as European music. 
But the civilized nations have, in their long course of 
musical practice, sifted the various modes of music, and 
decided that the major and minor modes stand at the 
head of the list, and are far superior, musically, to all those 
used by less cultivated nations. Mathematical investiga- 
tions show that these two modes, which are musically 
superior, are also superior in their numerical relations. 

In precisely the same manner those things accounted 
good among savage nations, but which are morally con- 
demned by civilized people, have in them, usually, some 
good element, and are to be condemned only by rising to 
the perception of something very much better. In the 
progress of knowledge, in the development of social 
statics, it will undoubtedly at some day be shown that the 
code of the highest Christian moralists, although founded 
upon the moral sense, sharpened and cultivated by moral 
training, is perfectly conformable to sound intellectual 
conclusions drawn from considerations of general and 
permanent utility. We may say that it has already been 
shown that the inferior moral codes of pagan nations are 
not consonant with such conclusions. 

And yet, we may also observe the unanimity with 
which even savage tribes acknowledge that moral de- 
mands upon the individual have an authority above all 
considerations of personal interest. The veriest savages 
have a code of criminal law. It may be crude and errone- 
ous; but it recognizes the existence of crime, of sin, of 
moral ill-desert. Its details may not be in conformity 


THE NATURE OF ETHICAL RELATIONS. 289 


with the soundest intellectual conclusions; but its exist- 
ence confirms the conclusion that moral instincts are an 
integrant part of human nature, irreducible by analysis to 
lower elements, and that savage and civilized man alike 
feel that moral necessity overrides logical necessity, as 
that overrides physical. 


IV. 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS® OF 
ERROR. 


THERE are three forms of activity in conscious life. 
The first is described in general terms as thought or in- 
tellection; the second, as feeling or sentiment; the third, 
as impulse, which ripens into desire, and culminates in 
will or volition. Christianity has frequently, I may say 
generally, been preached in a form which implies that all 
three departments or aspects of our nature are subject to 
ethical law. The demand upon the hearer has been to 
believe and obey the gospel; and the commands of the 
gospel have been summed up in the single injunction, 
“Thou shalt love.”’” A natural objection to such preach- 
ing of the gospel has frequently arisen in the hearer’s 
mind. It seems to make an unreasonable demand. It is 
said, We are commanded to believe; and yet belief is not 
a matter of will, but of logical necessity. A man must be- 
lieve according to the evidence, as it appears to his mind. 
We are commanded to love; but the affections are not 
subject to will. A man cannot refrain from loving that 
which seems to him lovely, nor from hating that which 
seems to him hateful. A command, it is said, enforced 
by any authority or by any sanctions, can only affect 
action; and the sphere of ethics, of duty and obligation, 
can only extend over actions. 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 291 


We must acknowledge that these objections to the 
Christian ethics have a great deal of plausibility. It may 
be said without qualification that the mind decides upon 
the truth of propositions through a logical necessity aris- 
ing from the perception of self-evident steps connecting 
that proposition with self-evident truths. Plausible, how- 
ever, as the objections may be, they are not altogether 
sound, We must remember that the three powers of the 
mind figuratively described as the head, the heart, and 
the hand are not, strictly speaking, three powers, but 
simply three aspects of mental activity. Some slight 
shade of feeling, some slight conation or effort of will, 
attends the most purely intellectual process. The phe- 
nomenon of attention is not to be overlooked. We select 
from the field of consciousness some part on which to 
fasten the intellectual activity. In this act of attention 
we may not rise to apperception. The effort of wil] may 
be so slight and the absorption in the object so great that 
we suppose the action to be involuntary. Yet involuntary 
attention is (in a strictly defined use of the words) self- 
contradictory: attention is a voluntary act of mind. The 
larger portion of the truths to which we have attained are 
inferences, they are the results of processes of reasoning ; 
and a process of reasoning is a voluntary arrangement of 
propositions leading to the inference. Hence a man may 
be to some extent, at least, justly held responsible for his 
opinions. A mind vacillating and changeable in its views 
on moral and religious questions indicates some moral 
deficiency both in the affections and in the will. The 
whole structure of civil society, the stability and happi- 
ness of domestic relations, depend upon men’s subjecting 
their opinion of one another to the stern control of will, 


292 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


and enforcing upon themselves care and impartiality in 
the sifting of evidence. The law concerning libel and 
slander takes it for granted that a man can refrain from 
yielding his opinion to hearsay evidence, and that he iS 
criminal if he repeats and intensifies such evidence with- 
out careful examination. 

History and biography, fiction and the drama, give us 
innumerable instances in which men have sinned and 
brought terrible suffering upon themselves and upon 
others by simply lending too ready a credence to evil re- 
ports. It requires a determined will to keep before the 
mind the fact that human testimony is not, in itself 
considered, conclusive evidence. Testimony must be 
weighed; and not only that, the witness who gives 
it is to be carefully weighed. When we consider how 
various and apparently conflicting the laws concerning 
legal evidence are, when we remember how intricate and 
difficult the science of logic is, when we see how numer- 
ous and how careful the precautions are, which are neces- 
sary for arriving at the truth concerning a question of 
mere outward nature, where we can put the matter into 
any form we choose, and repeat and vary our experiments 
as we will,— when we consider thus the difficulty of arriv- 
ing at truth and the ease of falling into error, we under- 
stand the more pressing need of care and caution in the 
important decisions of life. We cannot but regard the 
man who forms his opinions upon important matters of 
politics, morals, and religion hastily, and who changes 
them upon a slight re-examination, to be guilty of the 
moral sin of carelessness. Eccentricity in opinion, change- 
ableness, and obstinacy are alike to be condemned: they 
indicate a grave defect in the character of the mind, but 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 293 


a defect which is usually partly under the control of the 
will, Whether the eccentricity take the form of extreme 
scepticism or of extreme credulity, it may be made amen- 
able to the laws of evidence if one bring the force of will 
to compel attention to the evidence. The undue credulity 
of the bigot and the undue scepticism of the infidel are 
alike prejudices, condemned by both heathen and Chris- 
tian moralists, 

In other words, although a man can affect his opinions 
only by indirect means, they are not beyond the control of 
his will. The evidence which lies before my mind may 
point to a conclusion which I do not wish to accept. 
It may require of me a course of action repugnant to my 
feelings. It may require me to give up cherished hopes, 
to forego promised enjoyments, to enter upon tiresome 
labor. In this case I naturally turn my attention, the 
voluntary part of mental action, to a careful review and 
scrutiny of the evidence, or to a search after new facts 
bearing upon the question. If this search for the grounds 
of a new conclusion is conducted fairly and honorably, it 
is commendable. But it is evident that the extreme un- 
palatableness of my first conclusion may drive me to an 
unfair and unjust treatment of the evidence. 

The old English proverb is as true, philosophically and 
ethically, as it is accordant with experience and observa- 
tion,— 

“ He that’s convinced against his will 
Is of the same opinion still.” 


The Christian preacher is, therefore, not wrong in ascrib- 
ing an ethical quality to intellectual belief, He may err 
greatly in undertaking to decide in an individual case 


294 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


what are the causes of a man’s holding manifestly erro- 
neous opinions. Error in opinion is certainly in itself 
innocent. It is only in the steps which lead to the 
formation of opinions that the Opportunity for sin 
occurs. Even in so simple a matter as the holding of 
one or another opinion on a matter of physical science, 
the nice discrimination of causes and extrication of the 
ethical element entering into the intellectual state is a 
problem immensely complicated; and he who considers 
it carefully will agree with Saint Paul’s doctrine that a 
“man’s own conscience cannot give a really final decision 
upon the question of one’s own innocence or guilt. 

For the formation of sound ‘opinions a man needs in 
general the moral quality of humility. The self-conceited 
man rests in opinions accidentally formed, content to take 
them without examination or with the slight confirmation 
of his previous prejudices. “The more a man without 
humility knows, the greater fool he is.” Without humil- 
ity a man overrates his own knowledge and ability, while 
underrating the knowledge and ability of those who differ 
from him. But, in order to sound opinions, a man needs 
not only a just estimate of himself, but reverent feelings 
toward his superiors, and reverence toward truth. No 
lover jests concerning his beloved; and truth is never 
won except by those who court her with a lover’s ardor. 
He who does not reverently confess and feel the exist- 
ence of greater wisdom than his own has certainly no 
proper knowledge of his own ignorance; and a man must 
be aware of his own ignorance before there can arise in 
his mind any desire for more knowledge. Thus it is evi- 
dent, upon whatever side we approach the subject, that 
the moral defect of self-conceit, of irreverent flippancy, 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 295 


lies at the base of much of the ignorance and of the error 
of men. 

There are few subjects of general importance of which 
a man of ordinary education has never heard. In the 
general diffusion of knowledge, in the universal activity 
of thought, all men have formed, more or less distinctly, 
Opinions upon every kind of subject, or, at least, opinions 
which have a bearing upon every subject which can be 
named. When, therefore, new opinions are brought to 
our attention, they are always either consonant with or 
counter to some of our already forrned notions. Now, it 
is a natural and healthy desire of the soul to hold to the 
views which it has already attained. It is, indeed, an 
instinct absolutely necessary, it would seem, for a consec- 
utive and logical development of the understanding. Yet 
herein lies a new ethical danger, lest by force of will we 
withhold the mind from attention to the evidences of 
new truth; while by force of will we keep the attention 
forcibly held to the evidences of our old view. It may 
be true, I acknowledge, that a man should hold to his 
old opinions until forced by irresistible evidence to 
change them. Nevertheless, when a probable case has 
been made for the necessity of a change, he ought, in his 
examination of the evidence, to place himself as nearly 
as possible in an impartial attitude. 

It is moreover evident that in every case in which the 
Opinion is important a man is under moral obligation to 
seek for evidence; and, by importance in this connection, 
we must understand a reference to a personal relation. 
If we do not see, nor even suspect, that a given question 
bears upon our personal relations to other human beings 
or to our Creator, we may consider the question, in an 


296 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


ethical point of view, unimportant. I cannot, for example, 
see any ethical importance in the question of the true in- 
terpretation of the logarithm of a negative number. The 
great mathematicians of the world debated it for a full 
hundred years without having their own personal relations 
or their sentiments of piety affected by their views. But, 
in proportion as we see that an opinion may have an effect 
upon religious sentiment or upon our personal intercourse 
with men, we ascribe to it ethical importance, and are not 
only under obligation to weigh the evidence upon it, but 
are also bound to seek for all accessible evidence regard- 
ing it. It is a moral offence to pass a verdict in such 
cases upon ex parte testimony. The facts which have 
accidentally come to our knowledge might all point to a 
conclusion which other facts within our easy reach would 
completely overthrow. It is hardly necessary to add that, 
whether the evidence be accidentally presented or dis- 
covered by search, it is to be carefully examined and care- 
fully weighed. The impression given at first sight proves 
illusive as frequently in the internal vision as it does in 
external sense. 

If an opinion on any subject of importance to the moral, 
political, or religious welfare of men has not been formed 
with diligence and care in the examination of evidence, 
with impartiality and reverent humility, a man not only 
has done wrong in forming it, he will do still greater 
wrong if he proclaim it. The wise Hebrew rightly de- 
clares concerning the publication of evil opinion of one’s 
neighbors, that it is madness to throw firebrands and call 
it sport. But it is worse than madness, it is crime, to as- 
sist in spreading a slander. The heathen sage was right 
in saying that in slander three parties are injured ; and two 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 297 


of them, the listener and utterer, are guilty of the injury 
to all three. The same moral responsibility rests upon 
those who utter ill-advised opinions upon any moral, 
social, political, or religious matters. The man who pub- 
lishes an opinion which, by its reception, may produce 
serious effects on the happiness and the character of other 
men, is certainly bound, before the publication, to givea 
very careful and serious examination into the grounds of 
that opinion. He who rashly utters a judgment which 
may affect the happiness of his fellow-men is guilty of a 
disregard of their rights. Our words and the utterance 
of our opinions have a greater effect upon the hearer than 
we are apt to imagine. 

I dwell with the more earnestness and fulness upon this 
question of the ethical character of belief because I think 
I have perceived in the Christian Church the existence of 
two parties, each holding extreme and erroneous views. 
The one declare unbelief to be the great, almost the only 
sin: the other proclaim in unqualified terms the inno- 
cence of error. The first party pervert the doctrine of 
justification by faith, and make it a doctrine of justifica- 
tion through belief. It is said that he who believeth 
shall be saved. It is assumed that the belief is an intel- 
lectual assent to a scheme of salvation ; and it is forgotten 
that the Christian Scriptures require faith to be operative, 
to be the belief of the heart, and to lead to good works. 
I certainly would not agree with this view that assent toa 
creed is the faith which is necessary to salvation. 

At the same time it appears to me to be mischievous 
preaching to assert in unqualified terms the innocence of 
error. The preaching of this doctrine without qualifica- 
tion has, I believe, produced in thousands of cases a reck- 


298 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


less indifference to truth. I wish, therefore, to make 
clear to myself, and thus perhaps assist you in making 
clear to yourselves, what is the real measure of ethical 
responsibility in the formation and utterance of opinions. 
Ethical science assumes the existence of persons,— of per- 
sons capable of arriving at a certain amount of real truth. 
There can be no ethical relation between persons incapable 
of comprehending something concerning their relative po- 
sition and attitude. Moreover, ethics assumes truth to be 
a good, not only in itself as a food to the intellect, but an 
ethical good, because the knowledge of all truth whatever 
tends to throw light upon our relation to the infinite Per- 
son in whom all being centres. All truth, therefore, is a 
good, but emphatically all truth pertaining to personal 
relations. 

Now, Christians assume that certain truths of our rela- 
tions to each other, to Christ, and to God, have been 
revealed through Christ. When I say that they assume 
this, I mean that they affirm it in calling themselves 
Christians. In another sense of the word, they would 
earnestly deny that it was a mere assumption. They 
believe, and I believe, that there is abundant evidence of 
the reality of that revelation. Therefore, Christian ethics 
maintains that a man can, if he will, see the evidence for 
Christian faith, and be convinced by it. Of course, it 
must be admitted that no man is required to believe a 
falsehood, nor even to believe a truth for which he has no 
evidence. The testimony of a competent personal wit- 
ness must, however, be included in our enumeration of evi- 
dence. By far the larger part of the business of this world 
is conducted in absolute dependence upon the testimony 
of those who know, and in whose word we trust. And it 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 299 


has been repeatedly declared by men of the highest meta- 
physical and scientific ability that all knowledge of every 
kind —that is to say, all certainty —rests upon faith in 
the veracity of our faculties, which, in turn, rests upon our 
faith in the veracity of our Creator. 

No man can be required to believe that of which he has 
no evidence; but the Christian preacher maintains that 
every man has before him abundant evidence of the truths 
revealed through Christ. Therefore, every man is bound 
to examine that evidence without prejudice, and be con- 
verted by it. Of course, we are to push no proposition of 
this kind to its extreme limits. We are not to deny the 
possibility that an honest and good man may fail after ex- 
amination to be convinced of the reality of the Christian 
faith. We cannot deny the existence of mental peculiari- 
ties analogous to color-blindness, affecting our internal 
perceptions of truth. There are men incapable of distin- 
guishing colors. There are men incapable of appreciating 
harmony. ‘There are others who are apparently unable to 
grasp relations of number, others blind to the axioms of 
geometry ; some have no appreciation of wit; some fail to 
enjoy poetic fancy, others to follow the higher flights of 
imagination ; and some are incapable of appreciating the 
force of an argument. But all these are more or less ex- 
ceptional cases. Mankind, in general, can appreciate evi- 
dence if they will but give honest attention to it. While, 
therefore, we condemn those who assert the necessary 
sinfulness of unbelief, while we lament the folly of those 
who would frighten men by threats of eternal torment 
if they venture to use their reason in matters of religion, 
we must, on the other hand, lament the injudicious- 
ness, and I might say foolish rashness, of those who 


300 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


declare the absolute innocence of all intellectual error. 
One might as well declare the absolute innocence of all 
outward actions. Such antinomianism would be no more 
irrational than this doctrine of perfect indifference to 
truth, and its kindred doctrine that we are never to attain 
truth; that the truth of to-day is always to be outgrown 
to-morrow. Men should examine with care, in proportion 
to their time, opportunity, and capacity, every moral or 
religious doctrine which is thrust upon their attention. 
“Prove all things,” says Paul, “hold fast what is good.” 
We all fancy that we are obeying him. Every man, so 
soon as a new opinion is propounded to him, applies it to 
the touchstone of his previous knowledge and belief. 

What is needed is that the examination should be made 
in a reverent, careful spirit, without undue bias or preju- 
dice. One party in the Christian world obstinately adhere 
to their own formulas of faith, and sometimes to their old 
interpretations of them, irrespective of all evidence which 
may be brought to show their error. But there is another 
party which has been somewhat prominent in our day, so 
anxious to avoid bigotry and prejudice that they appear 
to mistake novelty for truth, movement for progress. We 
cannot too earnestly warn ourselves against both these 
faults in the conduct of the understanding. We must 
remember that it is just as great a sin to let go old truth 
as it is to cling to old error. Something must have been 
gained in the past, else nothing can be gained now. And, 
again, we must remember that it is as great asin to em- 
brace eagerly a new error as it is to repulse a new truth. 
If men have fallen into mistakes and adopted falsehoods 
in time past, they are doing so to-day. 

Dr. Holmes once read a lovely poem on the waves of 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 301 


time washing away the old continents of faith to form 
thereof new islands for the happier abodes of men. We 
are fond of repeating Robinson’s famous declaration, that 
there is more truth yet to break forth from God’s word. 
All which was, forty years ago, valuable and suited to those 
times. But herein America, since our Civil War, the times 
have very much changed ; for that matter, in Europe also. 
The difficulty is now not the difficulty of getting men to 
move from their moorings, and from their anchorage to 
iron-bound, immovable creeds. The difficulty in all de- 
nominations is to persuade men, when they have weighed 
anchor and hoisted sail or put on steam, to take also the 
helm in hand, to consult the chart, to take observation 
of the heavens. They are too apt to spread sail and drift 
before the wind; to put on steam, and dash heedlessly 
through foggy air, among rocky islands and icebergs. 
That Christianity is living and capable of taking new 
forms is true; but it is also true that Jesus Christ is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever. And all forms must 
be informed by his eternal and unchanging spirit, or they 
are not forms of Christianity. There is always more 
truth in God’s word, howsoever that word is spoken, than 
men have grasped; but that truth in God’s word is cer- 
tainly not the denial of the central facts and forces that 
word reveals. 

Emerson tells us that it is a fault of human rhetoric 
that we cannot state strongly one truth without seeming 
to belie some other truth. The Unitarian rhetoric in 
praise of freedom and of liberty has been pushed to the 
point of denying the value of law. Liberty is truly valu- 
able only when guided by law,—that is to say, the only 
freedom worth having is the liberty to do what is right, 


302 POSTULATES (OF VETHICS 


freedom to perform our duty. And in intellectual matters 
that is the same as to say that liberty is valuable only that 
we may seek truth. But, if you say that the search is to 
be perpetual, never rewarded with finding, you take away 
all motive for the search, and therefore all value from free- 
dom. Your shriek for intellectual liberty has become a 
maniac’s howl. It is very true, as W. B. Greene says, 
that there is more intense pleasure trolling for bluefish, 
flying before a spanking breeze on the white-capped 
Atlantic, than there is in gazing at piles of salted codfish 
in a storehouse; but, nevertheless, my good friend Colonel 
Greene would never make a yachting excursion after blue- 
fish if it were demonstrated to him to a certainty before- 
hand that he could catch nothing. The Unitarian de- 
mand for liberty of opinion is frequently pushed to that 
extreme: you may fish for truth forever, but you must 
rest assured forever that you have never caught any. 
Nothing is to be taken as a finality: you see it one way, 
I another; and nobody can say that either is right. I say 
this is an absurd extreme; as mischievous as blind faith 
in an infallible church can be. It destroys all rational 
motive to intellectual effort, and directly tends to produce 
supreme indifference to truth. It is as irrational as it is 
immoral. It is not borne out by any intellectual analo- 
gies to other departments of thought. Some modern 
agnostics perceive this unity of intellectual operations, 
but, being unwilling to admit that truth can be attained 
on religious themes, deny that it is attained in physical 
and mathematical science. Even the conceptual world 
gives them nothing sure. Two and two may not be four 
to an inhabitant of Jupiter, and two straight lines may 
completely enclose a surface beyond the North Star. 


THE INNOCENCE AND SINFULNESS OF ERROR 303 


Such are the wild and absurd dreams into which a man 
may be led by pushing the doctrine of the innocence of 
error and of the supreme value of liberty. Error may be 
innocent; but a man is responsible for that exercise of 
choice and attention in attending to evidence, or neglect- 
ing it, which may have led to the error. Liberty is sweet 
and dear; but it is valuable only to the man who uses it 
to seek patiently for new truth, and to cling to what is 
established,—to break away from old errors, but to turn 
also away from the new sirens and Circes who beset his 
way. 


‘ V. 
LOVE AND DUTY. 


In the opening of the last lecture I mentioned two 
objections which are naturally brought against Christian 
ethics. The first was that we are called upon to believe 
certain truths, while we are under a logical necessity of 
believing according to the evidence. The consideration 
of this objection led us into a discussion of the innocence 
of error and of the sin of unbelief. 

The second objection may at first sight appear still 
more important, since it lies not only against Christian 
ethics, but against a self-contradiction which is, apparently 
at least, involved in every ethical idea. Duty, obligation, 
would seem to rest imperatively upon the will alone, upon 
the conative faculties. The sense of right and wrong, the 
sense of moral responsibility, certainly appeals, primarily 
and directly, to the power of voluntary choice. And yet 
in all systems of ethics the chief stress is laid not upon 
the action, but upon the motive. The great law-giver of 
Israel summed up all human duty in love to God and love 
to man,— not in courses of benevolent action, nor in relig- 
ious ceremonies, but in the affections. The head of the 
Christian Church repeated this declaration of Moses with 
approval. But the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are 
not singular in this view of human duty. The unpreju- 
diced feeling of every human being is that sin and right- 


Ww 


LOVE AND DUTY 305 


- 


eousness lie in the motive, in the intent, in the affections 
of the heart, not in the outward act. Those who have 
attempted to write upon the science of ethics have gen- 
erally arrived at the same conclusions. Jonathan Edwards, 
one of the most profoundly original thinkers of our coun- 
try, has defined holiness or righteousness as being a love 
towards all being in exact proportion to its worth. In this 
definition, I think that he implies that persons are the 
only real beings, while things are merely appearances. 
Our love, therefore, toward the infinite personality of the 
Creator is, according to this definition of holiness and 
righteousness, to be supreme; our love toward all other 
persons to be in proportion to their worth, their personal 
power, wisdom, and holiness. But what I wish particu- 
larly to bring to your attention in this definition of 
Edwards is that this acute and vigorous thinker agrees 
with Moses and with Christ, as well as with the majority 
of ethical philosophers, in making the sum of all human 
duty to be expressed by this one word “love.” Holiness 
or righteousness consists in the love of all being in pro- 
portion to its worth. 

And yet, just as logical necessity compels a man to be- 
lieve according to the evidence before him, so zsthetic 
necessity compels a man to love that which is lovely to 
him, and to hate that which is hateful to him. The affec- 
tions are not under the direct control of the will; and this 
proposition holds concerning all the affections from the 
lowest to the highest. How, then, it may be asked, is 
it possible to be under obligation to love that which does 
not seem to us lovely, or to hate that which seems to us 
not hateful? All is determined, it may be said, by our 
constitution and its adaptation to our circumstances. 


306 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


He may be more fortunate who is born with a loving 
heart than he who is by nature jealous and morose, but 
neither can change his disposition any more than the 
leopard can change his spots. In other words, it may 
seem that the ethical law, which lays its whole stress 
upon having right and holy affections, commands us to 
do that which lies in the power of the Creator alone; and 
that it is self-contradictory in declaring that we must do 
that which we cannot do. 

In whatever direction the mind turns, it finds these con- 
tradictions. Such antinomies do not belong to ethics or 
to religion only, but to the weakness of every finite intel- 
lect. We find them in the simplest geometry and me- 
chanics as truly as in the most abstruse metaphysics and 
theology. In the present case we shall most readily find 
a solution by considering the unity of the spiritual nature, 
precisely as we solved the difficulty concerning the inno- 
cence of error and the sin of unbelief. Of course, we 
must admit that there can be no obligation to love that 
which is really unlovely. When our conscience unmistak- 
ably declares that a thing must be loved, it implies that 
the thing is truly lovely. If we do not see it to be so, we 
are not looking at it in the right light. We need to see it 
from a different standpoint, or to look at it with more 
attention. The affections are not, so far as any direct 
action is concerned, under the control of the will; but 
they are indirectly under the control of the man concen- 
trating all his powers to accomplish his purpose. A man 
may acquire by indirect means a love even of that which 
is bad, and aversion even to that which is good. Much 
more can he obtain, if he choose, a mastery over his heart, 
to guide it into the love of what is really lovely and into 


LOVE AND DUTY 307 


the hatred of what is really hateful. A sound ethical 
instinct never requires that which is unreasonable. It 
is reasonable in asking of us holy affections, because it 
is reasonable that such affections should be felt, “A 
carnal mind,” says the apostle, ‘is enmity against God”; 
that is to say, the mind which sees only truths pertain- 
ing to the body and to material nature, the mind which 
never rises to a contemplation of moral and spiritual 
things, nor recognizes the reality and transcendent im- 
portance of personal relations, has a natural repugnance 
to being told that our first and highest duty is to love 
the invisible and infinite God. We must make due allow- 
ance for this condition of the natural mind,—the mind 
which has not yet risen to a clear and vivid apprehension 
of spiritual truths. 

The love which is required and enjoined upon us by the 
prophets and the apostles, and by the native moral feel- 
ing of the noblest men of all ages and in all nations, al- 
ways contains an element of awe and veneration; of rev- 
erence,— a recognition of the superiority or dignity of the 
beloved object. Thus the word most frequently used by 
the Hebrew writers, and translated in our common ver- 
sion ‘the fear of the Lord,” does not, I think, imply a 
shrinking fear of God as the chastiser of sin, the sender of 
earthquake and pestilence. An examination of the con- 
text in which it occurs will show that it is rather obedient 
reverence and grateful adoration. The etymology of the 
word shows that it originally referred to the thrill caused 
by all high and deep emotions, rather than to the shud- 
dering produced by fear. The words used in the New 
Testament imply either the same derivation of the word 
from the thrill of deep feeling ; or the aspiration, the long- 


308 POSTULATES, OF ETHICS 


ing after, which is awakened by the sight of excellence. 
Christian friendship is more than an amicable interchange 
of petty kindnesses. It recognizes the divine element in 
each of the friends, and is built upon immortal hopes and 
illimitable powers. And, when I say Christian friendship, 
I mean that noble friendship which has existed always 
among men of spiritual character, but which the Christian 
revelation has sanctioned and sanctified, and the spread 
of Christian faith has so greatly multiplied. The same 
may be said of conjugal love, upon which Jesus set the 
seal of his approval, and which his teaching and the 
triumph of his gospel have rendered so much more fre- 
quent and so much more enduring. Every noble man, 
whether under the light of Christianity or of ethnic relig- 
ions, has found in conjugal love an analogy to worship ; 
and the language of adoration and of such love has in all 
languages always been similar. This is simply because 
the intensity of conjugal love opens the eyes to see the 
high realities of life, the actually high excellence of a 
human soul. 


«A lover’s eye can look an eagle blind.” 


Great heat is always accompanied by a brilliant light. 
The clear vision of reality in a universe made by the All- 
Good must awaken love; and the increasing love clears 
the sight, and renders both the vision brighter and the 
love itself more ardent. The only fixed limit in this 
process is the ability of the finite soul to bear the blind- 
ing light and the melting heat. The ardor of genuine love 
is, therefore, proportioned to the native nobility of the 
lover’s soul, to the clearness of his perception of the eter- 
nal verities ; and thence his perception of the presence of 


LOVEFAND? DUT ¥ 309 


a similar nobility of really high qualities in his beloved. 
Thus profoundly true to the moral nature of man is that 
memorable saying of Richard Lovelace : — 


‘TI could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honor more.” 


Nor can I find a stable basis for philanthropy, if I do not 
find it in the immeasurable dignity of human nature. 
That interest in the welfare of the human race which is 
commanded by the ethical law is based upon a recogni- 
tion of the brotherhood of all men, and their dignity as 
the sons of God. 

That conscience is right in demanding love, in looking 
to the state of the heart rather than to the quality of the 
actions, may be made manifest by various considerations. 
The sense of right and of obligation arises on the per- 
ception of certain relations between persons; between 
persons themselves, and not between their actions. 
What is demanded by my sense of right is that the person 
should take a certain attitude of inner personality toward 
other persons. But a person is a conscious being; who is 
capable not only of thought, but of feeling, and who has 
the power of will. His state of consciousness always in- 
cludes a state of feeling toward his fellow-beings; and 
this must enter, of necessity, into the conception of his 
relations toward them. The relation of person to per- 
son does not stand in the accidental conflict or harmony 
of accidental actions; but in the conflict or harmony of 
voluntary actions performed with a knowledge of their ef- 
fect upon others. This voluntary action is almost never 
capricious. Indeed, we may say that it always proceeds 


310 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


upon motives, that the motives depend upon feeling, that 
the feelings are founded upon or accompanied by beliefs 
or states of mind. Hence, it is evident that both the head 
and the heart —in fact, the whole personal being — must 
be right before the action can be wholly right. Whatever 
may have been the meaning of the Hebrew writer, the 
received version utters truth when it translates, ‘“‘ Keep 
thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues 
Olslilcns 

Still, the intellectual difficulty is brought forward, How 
can we bring the heart to feel aright, seeing that it is not 
under the direct control of the will? And, first of all, we 
may answer that, even should the intellect fail to solve 
this problem, it would not follow that the problem is in- 
solvable or the command impracticable. The conception 
of a curved line is apparently self-contradictory: at each 
point it must either bend or be straight. If it is straight, 
at that point it is not curved; while, if it bends at any 
point, there is an angle there, and it is no longer one line, 
but two meeting at that point. Yet this intellectual 
puzzle in defining a curved line does not destroy the 
existence of such a line, nor offer the least practical diff- 
culty in the way of drawing it. So Zeno thought that he 
had demonstrated the impossibility of motion. Many men 
have thought that they could prove that Achilles could 
not overtake a tortoise. Yet Zeno found no difficulty in 
moving; and many a race has shown that, if no accident 
occur, the swift will overtake the slow. It is thus with 
regard to the power of the will over the heart. There 
may be an intellectual difficulty in seeing how the affec- 
tions can be governed by the will, but experience shows 
that they are so governed. The homely proverb is true: 


LOVE AND DUTY 311 


“Where there is a will, there is a way.” The three parts 
of our nature move together ; and, in general, correct views 
produce right feeling, and right views can be attained by 
voluntary attention to the truth. If this fail, then, sec- 
ondly, right action in obedience to right views will 
awaken right feelings. Christian believers admit the pro- 
found truth of our Lord’s saying: “If any man will do 
the will of my Father, he shall understand my teaching.” 

But there is an additional truth involved ; namely, that, 
if any man will do his duty, it shall become his delight. 
This truth of human nature has been acknowledged in all 
ages by moralists and by poets,—that habit becomes a 
second nature, that the voluntary servant learns to love 
his service, and that voluntary conformity to God’s law at 
length destroys the desire to transgress. I was much im- 
pressed one day with the advice which I overheard a wise 
lawyer giving to a client who was absurdly jealous of his 
wife. The lawyer recognized some slight unsoundness in 
the client’s mind. He perceived that he had not the 
smallest real grounds for jealousy ; and he therefore ad- 
vised the man to endeavor to forget the whole matter, 
and, at all events, to treat his wife with the utmost cour- 
tesy, kindness, and devotion; to treat her precisely as 
though he loved her as in the olden days, and not to 
allow her to perceive that a shadow of suspicion had ever 
crossed his mind. And, when the client was gone, the 
lawyer said to me, “That is the surest and, indeed, the 
only way to bring back the old state of affection.” 

I shall speak of this mode of modifying the heart in a 
subsequent lecture, and have introduced it here only as 
an additional proof that Christian ethics are not irrational 
in demanding love to God and love to man as required 


312 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


affections, and in pressing upon the consciences of men 
that they ought to and must cultivate these affections. 
If they do not, they are fighting against all the forces of 
the universe, and must yield or die. 

The whole matter may be put ina few words. Ethics 
deal with personal relations, or attitudes of person to per- 
son. The moral instinct demands of us as a duty that we 
should assume right relations to God and to our fellow- 
men. In these right relations there is of course involved 
aright state of feeling or affection toward them, a kindness 
of heart and desire to assist them. Now, although man’s 
control over his belief and over his affection is not direct 
and unlimited, it is real and effective. He has the ability 
to bring his heart and mind and all his powers into sub- 
jection to his judgment of duty; and he is justly held re- 
sponsible for his opinions and his affections, as well as for 
his deeds. 

I say, opinions and affections as well as deeds. I mean 
that the whole man is subject to the law of God, and is 
to be governed and ruled by conscience. We cannot em- 
phasize one part to the neglect of another without doing 
wrong tothe whole. The legalist and the ritualist observe 
minute directions for conduct, and make no endeavor 
to keep clean within. The Augustinian and Calvinistic 
preacher has exalted intellectual conceptions above all 
claims of the moral law, and set orthodoxy of the head 
higher than purity of heart. On the other hand there 
are some who, in reaction from this view, lean so strongly 
to the other side as to lose their balance and fall into 
equally ruinous positions. They tell us, for example, that 
it is not unity of belief, or of creed, or of opinion, or of 
dogma, that we need as the bond of union and of brother- 


LOVE AND DUTY oy ss 


hood; but unity of spirit, unity of purpose, and unity of 
faith, This sounds well; yet a transparent fallacy lurks 
under it, which is capable of producing as much mischief as 
any of the errors of orthodoxy. There cannot be unity of 
spirit, nor unity of purpose, nor unity of faith, without 
unity of view, unity of opinion, unity of belief. Every 
feeling, every purpose, implies and is based upon some 
view of the situation, some belief. Faith in man implies 
a belief in the native character and ability of man, and the 
same may be said of faith in the ultimate triumph of truth 
and righteousness among men. Faith in God implies, as 
the writer to the Hebrews says, a belief that God is, and 
that he rules and orders the world to the final advantage 
of those who obey his law. Between a man who has felt 
the profound meaning of the words “I myself,’ and the 
fathomless meaning of the sentence “I was made in the 
image of God,’’— between such a man and one who has 
persuaded himself that the universe, himself included, is 
the product of an uncontrollable dance of uncreated atoms 
of matter, there can be no unity of faith any more than 
there is unity of belief. Unity in the Christian Church, 
one would think, implies also unity of faith in Christ. It 
is said, Yes; unity of faith in Christ, but not unity of be- 
lief about him. And this must be granted, but not with- 
out qualification. There cannot be faith in him with- 
out some belief about him; and if faith in Jesus be, as 
every one professing to be a Christian, in any just sense 
of the word, believes it to be, the great regenerator of 
men, then it is vitally important to retain in the Church 
and in the world that knowledge of his history which will 
lead to that belief about him which produces faith in him. 
We cannot put faith in him, trust him, believe him, accept 


314 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


his teaching, unless we believe that he is trustworthy and 
to be depended upon. 

Whether he existed before his conception by Mary or 
not, whether he was the son of Joseph or not, whether his 
inspiration was of a kind peculiar to his individual case or 
not, whether his humanity was simple, or whether his 
inspiration was the indwelling of God the Father, or of 
the Logos, or of the Paraclete,—all such questions of 
dogma may be set aside as of no comparative importance. 
No two men in the Christian Church will think alike upon 
them. But that Jesus was trustworthy and to be trusted, 
that he knew and spake the truth, that he knew and lived 
a holy life, that what he promised in his Father’s name 
will be fulfilled,— it is evident that a belief in such propo- 
sitions as these is implied in Christian faith, and that there 
must be unity of belief in them as a necessary prerequisite 
to unity of faith in him. 


VI. 
DETERMINISM AND UTILITY. 


Ir has frequently been asserted by recent writers that 
usefulness is the only measure of duty, and that man can 
owe duty only to his fellow-man. He cannot owe duty, 
it is said, to himself, because usefulness to one’s self is 
prompted by self-interest ; and, however well understood 
self-interest may be, it is generically different from disin- 
terested goodness. He cannot owe duty to animals be- 
cause animals have not sufficient mind and heart to appre- 
ciate good; and that which bestows benefit on animals 
alone, without any reflex benefit on men, may be kind, 
but it is not, in the proper sense of the word, useful. 
Neither can men owe duty to God; for, whatever may be 
our views of the existence or non-existence, personality or 
impersonality, of God, we must admit that he is infinite, 
and cannot stand in need of the services of finite crea- 
tures, nor receive benefits at our hands. In short, these 
writers say that the received version of the Bible blunders 
upon profound ethical truth when it renders the words of 
David, “O Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee, but 
to the saints which are upon the earth.” 

But, although this position has been taken by some 
writers of the utilitarian school, it is by no means a neces- 
sary consequence of the fundamental doctrine of utility. 
Utilitarianism and determinism in philosophy are both 


316 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


capable of being held in a great variety of forms; and, 
when either of these doctrines is carried out consistently 
to its highest results, it ends in self-destruction. In other 
words, it becomes absurdly identical in its results with 
the very truths which it began by denying. I introduce 
this mention of determinism, or, as it used to be called, 
necessarianism, because it is commonly supposed to bear 
directly upon questions of ethics. But, in reality, if the 
doctrine of necessity be thoroughly and logically carried 
to its extreme conclusions, it vanishes in an impalpable 
mist, which can have no real bearing upon any practical 
question. Let us give a few moments to the examination 
of this preliminary question whether the doctrine of 
necessity or determinism really renders the existence of 
obligation and duty impossible. 

The words “determinate” and “indeterminate,” as ap- 
plied to philosophical questions, may be considered figures 
drawn from algebra, just as such words as “upright,” 
“ straightforwardness,” “rectitude” and the like, are figures 
drawn from geometry. In algebra the simplest instances 
of determinate expressions are found in those cases in 
which as many expressed conditions are given as there 
are unknown quantities involved. The unknown quan- 
tities are then said to be determined by the conditions, 
That is to say, if those conditions are expressed in alge- 
braical language, any person having sufficient skill can ob- 
tain fixed definite values of the unknown quantities. It 
may happen that one of these quantities, or each of them, 
may have more than one fixed value; but, if the number 
of independent conditions is equal to the number of un- 
known quantities, no one of those unknown quantities 
can slide continuously from one value to another. Their 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 317 


values are definitely fixed. Now, in the physical universe 
it is almost universally assumed both by philosophers and 
by scientific men that everything is thus determinate. In 
other words, it is assumed that, if we have complete ex- 
pressions of the present state of the universe, it will be 
found that the number of conditions is equal to the num- 
ber of possible changes, so that sufficient algebraic skill 
could, from the present state of the physical universe, 
calculate its future state. Astronomy gives us a close 
approximation to this state of perfect knowledge. It 
predicts, many years in advance, the movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and experience justifies us in our abso- 
lute confidence that the predictions will be exactly ful- 
filled. What astronomy thus does for the cosmical masses 
of matter, chemistry is attempting, with more or less suc- 
cess, to do for the molecular combinations. 

And determinism in philosophy declares that, if we had 
complete expression of the present state of the human 
mind as well as of the physical world, sufficient skill could 
calculate with precision all future states of mind. Deter- 
minism in philosophy declares that all human thought, 
emotion, and action move through fixed states of sequence, 
in accordance with fixed laws of progression as invariable 
as those which govern the movements of matter. In fact, 
the whole movement of society, from the family to the 
state and the Church, proceeds, they tell us, upon the 
assumption that human actions, thoughts, and feelings 
may be calculated and predicted with certainty by per- 
sons of wise forethought who have the requisite knowl- 
edge of the conditions. It is a matter of common experi- 
ence, they say, that we do calculate and depend upon the 
decisions of reasonable beings under given circumstances ; 


318 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


and we can scarcely conceive that otherwise human society 
and progress would be possible. There is no reproach 
against aman more bitter than to say that we cannot de- 
pend upon him, that we cannot foresee what he will do in 
cases where it is plain what a reasonable man would do. 

Now, the first aspect of determinism might lead us to 
say that we should not reproach the untrustworthy man 
for the uncertainty of his actions, but rather ourselves 
for the uncertainty of our knowledge. It will be said, it 
is our folly that does not know the difference between 
Reuben and Zebulun. The nature and circumstances of 
the one have as completely determined him to sit by the 
brookside, and mingle his great thought and resolution 
with the bleatings of his sheep, as those of the other lead 
him to rush to the field of battle, and hazard his life in 
the thickest of the fight. In the determinist’s philosophy 
the sins of the wicked flow as inevitably from their cir- 
cumstances and their inherited temperament as the 
virtues of the saints flow from theirs. It would seem, 
under this view, that there is no merit in goodness, that 
there is no guilt in sin. The conception of good and iil 
desert must be an illusion. We certainly cannot sit in 
judgment upon the Almighty, and award him either 
praise or blame. But even the Hebrew prophet puts into 
the mouth of the Lord the saying, “I form light, and 
create darkness; I make peace, and create evil.’ Good 
and evil in the system of determinism can have reference 
only to the utility of the results, not to the motives of 
the actions. 

Nevertheless, the stanchest determinist does reproach 
the evil-doer. He reproaches himself if he detects base 
and unworthy thoughts within. His very ability to con- 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 319 


sider and discuss the questions of determinate or indeter- 
minate, his very ability to comprehend the question of 
good or ill desert, implies this sense of moral responsibil- 
ity. He feels that, if his system of determinism is true, 
this sense of responsibility is an illusion. Vet it is a 
necessary illusion, which, according to his own system, he 
cannot shake off. The necessarian not only believes but 
feels, in many cases, that error was unavoidable. All 
men admit that. We decide according to the evidence 
before us. We may have sought honestly and_ear- 
nestly for sufficient and trustworthy evidence, and failed 
to find it. Hence the intellectual error was unavoid- 
able and innocent ; but, when we come to the matter of 
sinful motive, of mean, selfish desires, of sinful purposes, 
it is far otherwise. The determinist says that these are 
as unavoidable, as fixed and determinate, as any errors 
of judgment. 

At least his theory says so; but his heart and his 
conscience say, “ You know better.” Yet, to make the 
theory consistent with itself, we must say that this reply 
of the heart and the conscience are as necessarily deter- 
mined as the sin itself. In other words, a consistent 
scheme of necessity must be inconsistent. It reduces 
itself to the absurdity of saying that, while the man’s 
head knows that his acts are determined, his heart and 
conscience know that they are not; and this knowledge 
that they are not determined is also determined. A 
thoroughly consistent determinist or necessarian is thus 
necessarily inconsistent. Dr. Joseph Priestley saw this, 
although he did not see that it was fatal to the doctrine 
of necessity. He held that it was our duty to feign anger 
and indignation at sin, even when philosophy had destroyed 


320 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


those feelings in us by showing us that the sinner acts 
under as strict a necessity of foreordination as the saint. 

The truth is that, if a doctrine of necessity or determin- 
ism is carried out consistently with regard to all physical 
as well as spiritual states, it has passed beyond the reach 
and power of any finite intellect to draw from it any con- 
clusions whatever respecting finite action. The motion of 
one part of the universe, however large that part may be, 
if not equally shared by some other visible part, may possi- 
bly be detected. But a motion in which all the universe 
visible to man is moving, at the same rate and in the 
same direction, cannot possibly be detected by human 
observation or have the slightest bearing on human 
action. Whenever a man draws any conclusion whatever 
from his doctrine of necessity, or determinism, it is there- 
fore certainly true that his doctrine is incomplete, and 
that there is a logical flaw in his reasoning. His conclu- 
sion may possibly be true; but, if so, it is by accident. 
It does not follow from his premises. In all our me- 
chanics, even in our celestial mechanics, we may assume 
the visible universe to be at rest in absolute space. No 
consequences could be logically drawn from supposing it 
in motion. Therefore we rule out of mechanics the 
hypothesis that it is all in motion, In like manner we 
may rule out the doctrine of determinism as having no 
bearing whatever upon any questions of human action. 
We can arrive at practical truth only from finite prem- 
ises; and even the stanchest necessarian is under the 
necessity of thinking, feeling, and acting precisely as 
though he were, what Aristotle declares him to be, 
an entelechy,—a being self-determining, originating 
his own movements, and defining his own ends. 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 321 


We shall arrive at very similar conclusions if we exam- 
ine the question of utilitarianism. The doctrine that 
pleasure is the only object of human pursuit, and that 
self-interest well understood is all that is really sought by 
the man supposed to be virtuous, was long ago given up. 
The modern doctrine is that we are to seek simply the 
greatest good of the greatest number for the greatest 
length of time, and that this pursuit of the highest utility 
constitutes the whole of virtue. But we must remember 
that utility in this largest sense is to be measured in four 
directions. In the first place we are to take into account 
the number of persons to be immediately or ultimately 
benefited; secondly, the length of time the benefit 
endures either for the individual or for his successors; 
thirdly, the intensity of the pleasure given; and, 
fourthly, the quality of the pleasure. Under the first 
head of extension we may consider whether the benefit 
is to accrue to an individual alone, or to extend to the 
members of his family, or to the community, the State, 
the nation, or the human race; under the second head, the 
permanence of the benefit,— whether the pleasure given is 
to be temporary, as with some hearers there is a delight 
in music, which ceases in forgetfulness as soon as the 
sounds have died away. Or is the benefit to be more 
permanent, as in the making of a harp which shall, under 
the hands of a skilful performer, give pleasure during 
half a lifetime? Or shall it be like the writing of the 
Iliad, which shall be a source of happiness to readers of 
a hundred successive generations? Or shall it be as 
Christians believe Peter’s preaching on the day of Pen- 
tecost was for thousands of his hearers,— a source of hap- 
piness to all eternity ? 


322 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


On the third point, of intensity, it is manifest that every 
kind of pleasure may vary as much in intensity as it does 
in permanence. There is a pleasure to a healthy appetite 
in the eating of ordinary food, but far less intense than 
that given by some delicious fruit or confection. There is 
pleasure in listening to the most ordinary music, if it be not 
marred by obtrusive faults ; but it is not comparable with 
the intense rapture of- a susceptible person who hears for 
the first time a great work of a great master. There is 
happiness in the consciousness of right spiritual inten- 
tion; but what is it compared with the rapture of Saint 
Paul, caught up into the third heaven, not knowing if he 
was in the body or out of the body, and hearing that which 
is unutterable in human speech? or with that of the 
Evangelist John, when he ascended above all the heavens, 
when the scroll of all the eternities was unrolled before 
him, and he heard the word which was from the beginning? 

But utility is measured, not only by the extension, the 
permanence, and the intension, but also by the quality of 
the happiness produced. The pleasures of sense are in- 
ferior in their essential character to the pleasures of 
knowledge. The pleasures of knowledge must in like 
manner be set in their very nature below the happiness 
arising from friendship, from family affection, and from 
social intercourse with our fellow-men. And even these 
latter pleasures are not equal in dignity to the happiness 
which arises from obedience to the conscience, or from 
reverential and adoring aspiration, gratitude, and love 
toward God. It is admitted and must be admitted that 
there can be no sentiment in human nature higher than 
that of reverent, obedient gratitude, adoring submission 
to the Universal Cause, the Creator of the whole. The 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 323 


highest utility, therefore, is found in those actions which 
shall lead men to the acceptance of religious faith and 
the practice of disinterested virtue. It is admitted by 
modern advocates of the utilitarian theory of morals that 
the highest virtue is attained only by the man who forgets 
himself and lives for others, and who perceives that the 
highest good which he can bestow upon others is to lead 
them to disinterested love and to adoring gratitude. 

We are therefore brought, in the consideration of 
utilitarian morality, to the same conclusion which we 
reached in regard to determinism in philosophy. Push 
utilitarianism out logically and consistently, and you lose 
yourself in an infinite mist where you have no guide, and 
must fall back upon disinterested obedience to conscience 
and to God. The theory is thus reduced to absurdity, 
and can be saved from it only by the greater absurdity of 
supposing that our consciousness of moral freedom and 
responsibility deceives us, and that our sense of obligation 
and duty are illusions, Of course, that cannot be said; 
for, if consciousness and intuition are deceptive, we have 
no basis on which to stand for any kind of reasoning 
whatever. All argument must rest on premises, and the 
first premise in the chain of argument can stand only 
upon direct intuition and the direct testimony of con- 
sciousness, 

Whenever, therefore, a man would draw any practical 
inference from utilitarianism, such as the impossibility of 
man’s owing duty to God, we may be certain that there 
is a fault somewhere in his logic, since utilitarianism, 
carried out logically to its end, destroys itself precisely as 
determinism does. It may be asked, Why, then, have the 
doctrines of necessity in philosophy and of utility in 


324 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


morals always been so attractive to a large class of minds, 
and to minds of a high order? I answer that they are, 
like many other errors, founded upon a perception of real 
truth, an imperfect perception leading to false inferences, 
but an imperfect perception of immutable and important 
truths. The falsehood and imperfection in every form of 
the doctrines of fate, necessity, or determinism, are pro- 
ductive of mischief, leading men to apathy, to indiffer- 
ence, sometimes to despair and madness. But by virtue 
of that measure of truth which the necessarian sees, and 
clings to with such earnestness, his doctrine produces also 
some of the finest results. The real truth which is half- 
concealed in every form of determinism is the sovereignty 
of indwelling grace. Man perceives that the Almighty 
reigns over all his works, controls and guides all his chil- 
dren; and this perception infuses indomitable courage, 
untiring industry, unconquerable perseverance. The be- 
liever works out his own salvation, with fear and trem- 
bling, with all the more zeal because he knows that it is 
God working within him to will and do of his good pleas- 
ure. He pushes forward to do great works of public 
utility, because he believes himself the man predestined 
to accomplish them. 

In like manner the falsehood involved in the utilitarian 
theory of morals produces a moral indifference to personal 
purity and inward piety; and it may even lead to under- 
valuing right motives in general and overvaluing mere 
outward action. But, on the other hand, the utilitarian 
theory sees (sometimes dimly and imperfectly) the grand 
truth of the Divine benevolence, that all things are work- 
ing together for good to those who comply with and con- 
form to the natural or divinely appointed conditions of 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 325 


success. This view leads to lives of kindly beneficence 
and practical usefulness. It leads men to be willing always 
to lend a hand. Its failures come from the imperfection 
and dimness of its view of that central truth which the 
eagle-eyed apostle proclaimed for us, that “God is love”’; 
a clear perception of which and acceptance in the heart 
lead to still better fruits of piety and philanthropy. 

The apostle tells us that “God is love,” that “he that 
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him,” that 
“he who doeth good is of God’; and the Roman moralist 
tells us that in nothing is man so like to God as in doing 
good to men. God is good, and designs good; but he 
sees that the highest good is not happiness, but the virtue 
which infallibly leads to happiness. The two things are 
coincident, but not identical. They cannot be separated in 
act, but they can be separated in thought. The man of 
highest virtue has the highest kind of happiness, but he can- 
not attain that happiness by seeking it. The moment he 
seeks it his disinterested virtue is gone, and his happi- 
ness gone with it. What is thus true for the individual is 
true for the race. If I seek the highest utility for my 
fellow-men, I must seek their virtue; for none of them 
can attain the highest happiness except in attaining the 
highest virtue. Whatever promotes the highest virtue of 
men is of the highest utility because it promotes their 
virtue; and it is right because it promotes their virtue as 
well as their happiness. That is useful, in the highest 
sense of the word “useful,” which promotes universal and 
eternal happiness; and nothing can do this except that 
which promotes virtue,— which leads men to choose and 
cling to what is right. 

But we are persistently asked, What do you mean by 


326 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


right? I answer that right is as indefinable as happiness. 
No simple idea can be really defined. It can be pointed 
out. It can be illustrated. It can be set before us in 
such manner as to make us recognize it. But it is to 
be apprehended by direct sight, by intuition. No man 
can say what is the meaning of such words as “hot” and 
‘cold,’ “red and!‘ green;” *¢space” and times haces 
and “love,” “ pleasure”’ and “pain,” “right” and “wrong.” 
The person constituted to perceive and receive the ideas 
may have his attention called to them. He may learn to 
distinguish and illustrate them; but he cannot be said 
properly to define them, to analyze them, or reduce them 
to simpler elements. We feel that we are under three 
kinds of necessity,— the physical necessity of cause and 
effect, the logical necessity of the sequence of ideas, and 
the moral necessity of right personal relations. “It is not 
necessary for me to live,” said More, “but it is necessary 
that I should tell the truth.” 

But in our idea of right is involved the idea of duty 
toward God. The personality in ourselves receives its 
highest dignity only when we perceive that we are in the 
image of the Infinite Creator; that our personality con- 
sists in our likeness to that Being whose origin and end 
are in himself, and who is therefore eternal. The moral 
instincts are aroused, therefore, to their highest and 
noblest activity only in the recognition of God’s being 
and of our duty to him. Monotheism, the recognition of 
our relation to God, is the moral force which has lifted 
Europe out of Epicurus’s sty, and given us the long list of 
Christian heroes, and of moral victories over sin. 

When it is said that henceforth the energy of the 
Church must not be wasted in the attempt to serve God 


DETERMINISM AND UTILITY 327 


and to live for eternity, but be used to serve men in the 
present life, a Christian truth is presented in the garb of 
a pernicious error, whose influence, so far as it is re- 
ceived, would be to destroy all interest in what is high or 
noble in human life. The Wesleyan sings, “To serve the 
present age, my calling to fulfil”; and the Wesleyan 
Church has been foremost and most successful in pro- 
moting the temporal benefit of man. All the labors of 
secularists and materialists, from the beginning, have not 
done a hundredth part so much for the social happiness 
and commercial prosperity of men as the Methodist 
Church has done. But how have the followers of Wesley 
wrought their miracles of reformation and transformation ? 
It has been by the fervor of their piety toward God, their 
zeal for Christ, their longing for the spiritual salvation of 
men. 

The history of that Church is thus a practical or exper- 
imental illustration of the real value, even for temporal 
things, of personal piety,—that is, of religious ethics,— 
of acknowledging that the first and highest obligation is, 
as Moses and as Christ have declared, to love the Lord 
our God, with a consecration of all our powers, first of all 
and above all, to him. 


Wale 
DUTIES RELATIVE TO SEEF: 


Ir we are right in the definition which we have 
given of the sphere of ethics, it is not possible for a 
man to owe a duty to himself. Duties are due to other 
persons. They arise out of the relation of person to 
person. It may even be doubted whether we can, in 
the strictest sense of the word, owe duty, or be under 
obligation to the lower animals. Their personality is of 
so much lower order than ours that we can scarce apply 
to them ethical terms, except figuratively ; and our obli- 
gation to them is rather an obligation to their Creator 
than to them. In other words, we cannot strictly be 
guilty of injustice to an animal, but we may be guilty of 
cruelty; and cruelty to an animal is a species of impiety 
toward its Creator. 

If, however, it were possible to conceive a finite being, 
such as an individual man, absolutely self-dependent 
and without relation to any other conscious being, created 
or uncreated, such an independent finite being would have 
no duties. It would be impossible to conceive of his 
being under any obligation. We can, however, imagine 
no such finite independence. But, even in regard to the 
infinitely absolute, we are not able strictly to apply such 
terms as “duty” and “obligation.” We reverently ac- 
knowledge the holiness of God, we gratefully adore his 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF 329 


love; and we perceive that these coexist with absolute 
wisdom and absolute freedom. 

We cannot say that his nature compels him to wise 
and holy action: the word “nature” is as inapplicable to 
him as the word «“ compel.” * Wisdom and love and 
power constitute his being, and nothing either compels or 
hinders his absolutely free choice of that which is best. 
His holiness is thus inscrutable to our reason. The only 
holiness which we can clearly conceive and express in lan- 
guage lies in a voluntary obedience to right. All our 
words concerning it being human, derived from our finite 
experience, imply bonds, as is shown not only in their 
etymology, but in all our attempts to analyze the thought 
which they convey. Thus duty and obligation in their 
etymology speak directly of bonds: right indirectly refers 
to rule or commandment. If it were possible to imagine 
a finite being absolutely alone in a universe without 
a Creator, he would be under no moral bonds. There 
would be no other person to whom he could bear relation, 
to whom he could be bound. Selkirk watched constantly 
for his hoped for deliverance. Daily climbing to his look- 
out on the mountain top, he searched the offing with long- 
ing desire to see a sail. He was still consciously bound to 
his fellow-men. More than this, he had been brought up 
in Christian faith, he expected a future life, he recog- 
nized his relation to the great family of preceding genera- 
tions, he recognized his relation to God. Thus his so- 
journ on the lonely island by no means released him from 
moral bonds and obligations, or left him in the impossible 
condition of owing duty simply to himself, 

But, although there cannot be any duty owed directly to 


* Aristotle says that God is eternally active wisdom, and Saint John says, God is love. 


330 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


one’s self, there are duties in reference to one’s self; and 
when ethical writers speak, as they frequently do, concern- 
ing our duties to ourselves, they use an elliptical expres- 
sion, and mean our duties in reference to ourselves. Itisa 
case in which the letter killeth, while the spirit giveth life. 

To believe that we literally can owe duty to ourselves is 
to introduce disastrous confusion into our ethical thought; 
and it may even lead to grave ethical mistakes in the con- 
duct of our inner and our outer life, as I believe it did in 
the case of Goethe, and probably of other worshippers of 
culture. Shakspere’s Polonius was a worldly-wise man; 
and when he said, 


«¢ To thine own self be true; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man,’’— 


he said that which in the clear light of reason, as well as 
of revelation, is absurdly false and mischievous. But to 
recognize our duties in reference to ourselves is a highly 
important part of practical wisdom,— indeed, in one as- 
pect may be considered as the most important of all duties. 

Let us recall for a moment the definition of duty 
which I have quoted from Mr. Alger in a previous lecture. 
Truth is, according to him, the form of being; beauty is 
the unity of being; natural good is the end of being; and 
right is the hierarchy of ends. In other words natural 
good is the fulfilment of functions ; while moral rectitude, 
or conformity to the hierarchy of functions, is the fulfil- 
ment of function in the manner which will most effectu- 
ally conduce to the perpetual and universal fulfilment of 
function. 

But the ends of being to be attained by the fulfilment 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF 331 


of functions are appointed of the infinite wisdom of the 
Creator. Out of him, the uncreated, all creation springs; 
and this, the created, constitutes the whole of that 
which we can be properly said to know or compre- 
hend. His being and attributes we simply apprehend. 
The agnostics are right in Saying that the Uncreated is 
unknowable. They are wrong in not adding the all-im- 
portant exception, “except as he reveals himself.” He 
reveals himself through creation and through inspiration. 
The uncreated Creator, considered independent of his 
creation and his inspiration, is absolutely unknowable by 
us, Or, in the paradoxical expression of the German meta- 
physician, ‘Pure being is the same as pure nothingness” 
to human thought, since it can lay hold of neither. 
Truth is the form of being; that is, the form of its 
becoming manifested in creation. The being, the sub- 
stance, the reality, are not comprehended by us. Their 
existence is apprehended through the form or mode of 
manifestation in which the Infinite Being brings the par- 
tial being into contact with our consciousness. This form 
of being is truth. Again, beauty is the unity of being, 
not in its substance or reality, which is incomprehensible 
to us, but the unity of its form of manifestation, the 
unity of the thought by which it is created or brought 
into possible contact with our consciousness. It is our 
apprehension, more or less perfect, of this intellectual 
unity binding together the parts of a complex truth, 
which gives us the sense of beauty ; more or less intense 
in proportion to the simplicity of the thought at the centre 
and the multiplicity of the parts embraced under it. 

Now, in like manner, ends are appointed of God. The 
conception of end or purpose is inseparable from the con- 


832 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


ception of a creator or designer, as I propose to show 
more at length in a succeeding lecture. Natural good is 
the end of being; that is, the fulfilment of ‘the uses 
for which the being is adapted. The duty of a being 
subject to moral law may be discovered from a knowledge 
of his destined end; and the destined end may be inferred 
from the organization. This view is the foundation upon 
which Jouffroy builds his whole ethical system. All 
moral duty is included in the duty of conforming to the 
order of spiritual being appointed by our Creator. All 
duties constitute a sacred hierarchy, whose ranks and 
orders are appointed of God. We are bound to respect 
each in proportion to its dignity. This thought is prob- 
ably identical with that which lay in the mind of Edwards 
when he defined holiness as the love of all being in pro- 
portion to its worth, But, as all being flows from the 
one creative Source to which supreme homage is due, so 
the love of all inferior beings may be considered as obli- 
gatory, because of that first obligation. The second great 
commandment of Christian ethics is, as it were, a corollary 
from the first. 

We can owe no duty strictly to ourselves; but, after the 
considerations just presented, our duties in reference to 
ourselves become very clear. Our organization, spiritual 
and moral, shows our destined end, and therefore our 
duty. The Westminster Catechism expresses it well: it 
is “to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” We are cre- 
ated to become intelligent, willing, and obedient children 
of God, coworkers with him in promoting the good of 
men; that is, helpful, loving brethren in his family. It 
may therefore, under one aspect, be justly said that the 
most important of all duties is in reference to ourselves, 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF 333 


to bring ourselves into this state of obedience to him. 
The highest obligation is the obligation to obey law, the 
obligation to recognize obligation. In this aspect the 
primal condition under which alone we can perform our 
duties to other men and to God is that we first perform 
our duty with reference to ourselves. Thus Cicero de- 
clares self-government to be the sum and substance of 
morality: “Totum in eo est ut tibi imperes.”’ President 
Hickok calls it self-possession, although not in the ordi- 
nary meaning of that word, but in the sense of obtaining 
possession of one’s self. Every part of our being is, in- 
directly and to some extent, under our control; and we 
are to bring every thought into captivity to rule, and di- 
rect our whole body, soul, and spirit in the way of God’s 
commandment. 

In a lecture upon education, W. T. Harris uses a very 
quaint but very forcible figure in saying that no man has 
yet entered into the highest life, and begun his spiritual 
ascent, until he has first taken himself by the nape of 
his own neck, and forced himself to walk in the strait 
and narrow path. Until a man has done this, he has not 
attained his full personality. True liberty comes only 
in obedience to law, as may be illustrated from physical 
and physiological as well as from mental laws. The 
words of our Saviour— “He that committeth sin is the 
bond-servant of sin’’—are profoundly true, and will stand 
after the most rigid psychological analysis. The condi- 
tions on which alone life is possible are narrow. Obe- 
dience to law is the fulfilment of those conditions: sin is 
the violation of them. Consequently, sin is a fettering, 
hampering, and destroying first of the liberty of the soul, 
then of the soul itself. 


334 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


Our duties in reference to ourselves may be subdi- 
vided in two different ways. First, in reference to the 
parts of our nature, we may consider our duties in ref- 
erence to the care of the body, the training of the mind, 
the cultivation of the affections, and the exercise of the 
will. ‘These four divisions of body, mind, heart, and will, 
may be so interpreted as to include all parts of our nature. 
And in each of the four, two modes of self-control will 
be found necessary,—the spur and the rein. In this 
guiding of ourselves, our chart of directions is to be found 
in our total knowledge, whether of ourselves, of our fel- 
low-men, or of the world in general. We thus make eight 
subdivisions of the question of our duty in reference to 
self; and each one of these eight may be almost indefi- 
nitely subdivided. 

Take, for example, the care of the body; and, first of 
all, we must care for its maintenance in full vigor, health, 
and strength. Consider how many different points re- 
quire our attention in this mere matter of maintaining 
physical vigor. The choice of articles of food may be 
guided to some extent by the general experience of man- 
kind; but it also requires, in order to produce the most 
satisfactory results, a careful attention to one’s own 
idiosyncrasies and circumstances. Muscular exercise, or 
gymnastics, may be regulated in a general way by estab- 
lished rules; but that also must be adapted by special 
variation to the individual. The supply of fresh, pure air, 
the cleansing of the body, the modifications of the mode 
by which that cleanliness is procured,— these and various 
other points of merely physical interest require attention 
and adaptation to the individual need. In all this matter 
it will be perceived that both spur and rein are needed : 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF 335 


the rein to control the appetites and passions, and even 
to control the animal spirits which might lead to over- 
exertion ; and, on the other hand, the spur to stimulate and 
drive us into doing that which we judge will most effectu- 
ally preserve and increase health and strength. , 

But there is an entirely different care of the body 
needed besides that which provides for its healthful vigor 
and enduring strength. Skill is just as essential to the 
fulfilment of the ends of our being as strength; and skill 
is to be acquired only by long-continued, intelligently 
guided practice, to which we are driven by moral consider- 
ations of duty with reference to ourselves. Moreover, both 
our own esthetic sense and our regard for the feelings of 
our neighbors require us to cultivate, so far as consistent 
with other ends, grace of movement. In one aspect 
gracefulness is only a part of skill; for skill would require 
us to waste no force, and grace is the result of the utmost 
economy of force. 

The subdivisions in our care of the intellect are as 
numerous as those in the care of the body, of which I 
have by no means exhausted the enumeration. The life 
bread of the intellect is knowledge ; and, as the nutritive 
quality of different kinds of food is various, so the value 
of different kinds of knowledge for strengthening the 
mind is of different degrees. The gymnastic of the mind 
is called study. It is the voluntary continuance of atten- 
tion upon a chosen theme. Like exercise of the body, it 
may be so chosen and directed as to increase the practical 
strength of the intellect, or it may be so misdirected as 
rather to injure the powers of the mind, precisely as inju- 
dicious bodily exercise may do more harm than good. 
The need of rest is equally great in the training of the 


336 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


mind and in the training of the body. While the muscu- 
lar system is inactive in sleep, the nervous power is being 
accumulated, ready to be expended on awakening, either 
in the direction of new muscular movement or new men- 
tal effort. The mind not only lays hold of the solid food 
of knowledge, it breathes the air of fancy. The imagina- 
tion is an essential and most valuable part of our intellect- 
ual nature, and requires as careful a cultivation as do 
the reason and the understanding. It is as easy to defile 
the mind and conscience with the knowledge and imagina- 
tion of evil as to weaken the body by unwholesome food. 
And in all this government of the intellect it is evident 
that spur and rein are both needed, the one to arouse us 
from mental indolence, the other to restrain us from a 
vain overtasking of our powers. 

That the heart, the affections, need cultivation, and that 
we are responsible for their state, is implied in the pre- 
vious lectures. A man is to look carefully at himself, and 
discover, if possible, his own defects in temper, taste, incli- 
nation, habits; everything that makes him less of a man, 
less worthy of the respect of his fellow-men and of the 
approval of God. And, wherever he finds a failing or a 
fault, he is to strive with his might to amend it. As I said 
before, this is a primal duty,—this duty of self-improve- 
ment, of self-culture; and it is so felt by every serious- 
minded man. I was once greatly impressed by the man- 
ner in which a man answered my inquiry how a neighbor 
of his was getting along. ‘Oh,’ answered he, in a tone 
of mingled contempt and indignation, “he goes along as he 
used to, nursing his own faults instead of fighting them.” 
“Nursing his faults instead of fighting them” clung to 
me for years. It was alay sermon, as powerful to me 


DUTIES RELATIVE TO SELF 337 


as many a much longer one from the pulpit. We can 
serve others effectually by first making ourselves what we 
ought to be. 

Of course, in the contest with our own faults, we must 
remember that self-absorption and egotism are faults. 
“Took out, and not in,” is the motto for a healthy soul. 
You look in, only that you may look out. You look into 
the telescope only to remove dust or to arrange maladjust- 
ments and put the instrument into order, that you may 
look out upon God’s heavens and his earth. Nothing is 
more ridiculous and useless than the man who is studying 
himself and cultivating himself to the neglect of his duty 
toward others. We want no Poloniuses nor feeble imi- 
tators of the Titan Goethe, sitting in a circle, “where 
self-inspection sucks its littlc thumb.” What we want is 
that a man should govern himself in the right way so per- 
fectly that other men shall think he does it naturally, and 
that he himself shall forget how hard a struggle he had to 
attain the victory. The proper end and reward of labor 
is that it shall become play. The highest perfection of 
art is attained only when the imitation of nature is per- 
fect. 

We must be careful, therefore, to teach men by precept 
and example to live and act nobly, to bring their thoughts, 
feelings, desires, words, and actions all into conformity 
with the highest Christian standard, with no more thought 
about themselves, no more self-examination, than is neces- 
sary to that end; and to avoid entirely all display of them- 
selves, of their own feelings and internal struggles. 

The canon, ‘“‘ Artis est celare artem,”’ — it is the peculiar 
proof of art to conceal art,— does not convey the whole 
truth. The highest art conceals itself, not only from 


338 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


the spectator, but from the artist. As Horace Bushnell 
showed so eloquently in his Phi Beta Kappa oration, 
work is not perfectly performed until it has passed above 
the sphere of conscious labor, and become play. From 
the simplest mechanical arts, such as walking, running, 
skating, up to the highest spiritual arts, such as sacred 
oratory, poetry, music, the perfect mastery of the art is 
not attained until all conscious sense of labor in it is lost ; 
that is, until both to the man himself and to others the 
thing seems to do itself through him, rather than he to 
do it. 

This is the final end of a man’s duty in reference to 
himself. It is so to train himself, body and mind, heart 
and soul, speech and action, that he may bring every 
power of his being, according to the natural measure in 
which he has been gifted, into perfect obedience to his 
highest ethical instincts, so that he shall always, without 
the need of conscious struggle, do and say, act and feel, 
in perfect accord with his convictions of duty. The 
highest state of liberty is in all departments found in the 
strictest obedience to law. This profound truth, first 
announced by our Lord, and confirmed by every line 
of a priori as well as experiential reasoning, is most em- 
phatically true in reference to morals and religion. It 
is only by strict conformity to the conditions of life that 
we can enjoy life. It is only by an unreserved conse- 
cration of one’s self to the highest service of God and 
man, by forgetfulness of self and concentration of our 
powers upon obedience to the highest law, that we can 
attain the highest freedom,—the glorious liberty of the 
sons of God. 


VIII. 


THE CONNECTION OF ETHICS WITH 
RELIGION. 


THE question has been debated, with a good deal of 
interest, whether any form of ethics is possible in an 
atheistic philosophy. The so-called positive school, re- 
fusing to consider the existence of a First Cause, has, in 
some instances, been pushed to the illogical extreme of 
denying the existence of God, and reducing the whole 
universe to matter in motion. The problem has been 
raised whether under this completely materialistic view 
of the universe there can be any true system of ethics. 
It is evident that one of the great difficulties in answer- 
ing this question lies in the difficulty of defining its terms. 
God is infinitely great under whatever aspect he is viewed ; 
and it is impossible sharply to define our apprehension 
of attributes which we cannot comprehend. Ethics is a 
broad science, covering the relations of personal beings 
to each other; and we cannot sharply define what per- 
sonal being is, nor what relations of personal beings are 
included in ethics. Hence the difficulty of arriving at 
conclusions which will be universally admitted with re- 
spect to the connection between ethics and theism. 

Another difficulty arises from difference of views as to 
the nature of the connection which is sought. If it be 
asked, Is ethics dependent upon theology? we may ask in 
reply, Dependent in what sense? It was customary thirty 


340 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


years ago to make a distinction between logical and 
chronological dependence. We may ask whether the 
sense of obligation and the existence of duty logically 
imply a belief in God, or we may ask whether they are 
actually historically produced by a belief in God. It Is 
admitted by almost every writer upon the topic that there 
is an historical connection, that among all nations moral 
duties are enforced to greater or less extent by religious 
sanctions. Professor Huidekoper has indeed shown that 
the connection between the religion of the classical times 
and their morality was exceedingly slight, that monothe- 
ism was practically necessary to give vigor and efficiency 
to conscience; yet both Grecian and Roman literature 
give us abundant proof that in the earlier days the gods 
were supposed to be the avengers of the injured and the 
punishers of certain kinds of crime. I once had a 
personal acquaintance, and indeed intimacy, with a young 
Chinaman, born and brought up in a country village near 
Canton. He told me the story of his early rejection of 
the polytheistic fables held for truth by the lower class of 
Chinese, and he was very emphatic in affirming that the 
first effect of this religious scepticism upon his mind was 
to make him lose for a time all sense of the obligations of 
truth and of filial obedience. 

But, although the historical connection between ethics 
and theology is thus uniform, and the chronological de- 
pendence of morality upon religion so well-nigh universal, 
it does not follow that there is a logical dependence. 
That question is to be settled by psychological and 
metaphysical analysis of the problem. There are many 
at the present day who strenuously deny this dependence. 
But I must confess that it seems to me that before this 


ETHICS AND RELIGION 341 


denial is made both sciences, ethics and theology, are 
eviscerated, emptied of their true content. It is very 
easy to draw any conclusions you please concerning the 
relations of two sciences, provided you may first define 
and characterize the sciences as you please. When the 
positive school declare that our whole knowledge is but 
the knowledge of sensations, that we have no real power 
of inward sight, that we do not know even our own exist- 
ence, much less the existence of other men, and a 
fortiort that it is impossible to know anything concerning 
the existence of matter or of force or of God, it is evident 
that their definitions both of theology and of ethics must 
differ very widely from mine. 

The great sciences consist of the knowledge of states 
of being in mutual relation. Metaphysics deals with the 
relation of being to being; ethics, with certain relations 
of personal beings; esthetics, with peculiar relations of 
parts to a whole; physics, with the modes in which 
other being enters into relations with our consciousness ; 
mathematics, with the relations of our consciousness to 
space and time, which again are the relations of the uni- 
verse to the omnipresence and eternity of its Creator. 

Ethics, in the best sense of the word, deals with certain 
relations of person to person ; the relation, namely, of re- 
ciprocal rights and duties. It is manifest, therefore, that 
the denial of personality to the human being, the reduc- 
tion of the man to a course of motion wholly determined 
by mechanical impact, denying to him all power of self- 
determination, all freedom, takes away the possibility of 
obligation, or duty, or rights. Ethics founded upon the 
perception of obligation, of duty, implies a simultaneous 
perception of the existence of personal being in ourselves 


342 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


and in others. It imperatively demands the recognition 
in man of moral freedom. It regards man, to use Aris- 
totle’s word, as an entelechy of a high order, containing 
in himself the power of originating action, and of deter- 
mining its end, Now, this admission of the self-determin- 
ing power of the human mind —this admission that we are 
what we know that we are, personal beings — leads at once 
also to the perception that the whole universe must be, in 
a still higher sense, and still more completely, in its total- 
ity, under control of a free, self-originating, self-determin- 
ing Actor. This has been shown by Aristotle and by 
more recent thinkers in the Christian Church. William 
T. Harris has successfully refuted Kant’s criticism of An- 
selm’s demonstration, so that we may safely say that the 
admission of the substantial, real personality of man in- 
volves the admission of the personality of God. Thus the 
existence of a true ground for morality implies the exist- 
ence of a true ground for theism. Conversely, the admis- 
sion of a personal God instantly, by our very definition of 
ethics, makes religious ethics the most important part of 
the science. It sets the whole matter in the light in 
which it is placed by the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, 
— that our first duty is love to God, and that our duties to 
our fellow-men are rendered the more imperative because 
men are his children. 

On the other hand, the denial of personality in God, the 
denial that he is Spirit, involves at once the conclusion 
that all the universe consists merely of matter in motion, 
and that ethical relations are simply a very refined and 
very complicated variety of mechanical relations. Under 
this view all our moral sentiments and moral intuitions are 
a species of illusion, although this view leaves no one to 


ETHICS AND RELIGION 343 


be deluded. For the materialist, in fact, assumes the self. 
contradictory, unthinkable position of his own non-exist- 
ence, yet of his ability to perceive the existence of mat- 
ter, and to feel its ability to deceive him, a nonentity, into 
the belief that he exists. The positivist does not plunge 
into absurdity quite so deeply. He does not know 
whether he exists or not, nor whether matter exists or 
not. He only knows that, although he may be non-exist- 
ent, he perceives motions in something which, however, 
may also be non-existent. Under either system of philos- 
ophy, materialist or positivist, the foundations for any 
real and substantial ethics seem to me to be completely 
Swept away. Moral science becomes a branch of what 
Comte calls Social Statics, a consideration of the most 
delicate motions of which matter is capable, the motions 
of the brain. It isa branch of animal mechanics. It is 
reduced to a branch of physiology,— not in Sterry Hunt’s 
broad meaning of the word, as general physical science, 
but in the narrow meaning of the knowledge of the 
human body. 

All the moral sentiments and feelings inwrought into 
all human consciousness, uttering themselves in all lan- 
guages and all institutions, among the most enlightened 
and among the most savage people, are thus double wit- 
nesses to the being of God and to the fact that man was 
made in the image of God. This was the “impregnable 
position” of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aristotle, in Opposi- 
tion to the mechanical atheism of Democritus and Aristip- 
pus. The former argued from the actual existence in the 
human mind of reason, intelligence, and moral aspiration, 
to the necessary existence of moral attributes in the 
Creator of the universe. “Merely physical agencies” — 


344 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


matter and motion —could “never have evolved a moral 
being seeing moral ends.” 

Another point is involved almost necessarily in this 
discussion, the connection of morality with the doctrine 
of a future life. There have not been wanting, during 
the last few years, men professing to be Christians and 
to believe in human immortality, who have neverthe- 
less said that the rejection of the Christian doctrine of 
immortality does not necessarily weaken the sentiments 
of duty, nor relax the sanctions of the moral law. If this 
life were the whole of our being, they say, it would only 
be the more incumbent on us to make it all the more 
noble, and get the most out of it that we could. This has 
a generous sound, and does credit to the moral sentiments 
of those who utter it; but I do not think it will bear the 
scrutiny of reason. ‘This idea of getting the noblest satis- 
faction out of a short life is based ona secret feeling of our 
being able hereafter to look back upon our course with ap- 
proval. The brevity of life, to one thoroughly convinced 
that death is the extinction of the soul, would have no ten- 
dency to make a man select the noblest kind of pleasure, 
but only to make him seek to enjoy to the utmost what 
he could enjoy. Thus the conviction of annihilation at 
death might lead to nobler efforts in a man already filled 
with noble sentiments; but it would more surely lead the 
majority of men to self-indulgence in whatever chanced to 
be their ruling passion. The Anacreontic and Epicurean 
poetry of the ancient world expresses the actual and, I 
think, the natural effect of the denial of immortality: “Let 
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The poems of 
Catullus and Horace, and the so-called Anacreontic odes, 
are full of the expression of such views. 


ETHICS AND RELIGION 345 


But it is objected that every such appeal to the sanctions 
of a future state implies the selfish theory of morals. 
John Locke says that Christianity gave virtue the advan- 
tage over sin by throwing eternal happiness into the scale 
on the side of virtue. Saint John, however, gives a differ- 
ent view,— that we love God because he first loved us, and 
that our love to God leads us to keep his commandments. 
The rewards and punishments of the world to come are 
secondary, not primary, agencies in producing moral 
righteousness. Hope and fear are powerful to draw the 
attention. Love alone has power to create enthusiasm 
and to inspire holiness. The whole of duty is, indeed, 
summed up in love. 

But, in order that we may see more clearly the real con- 
nection between ethics and faith in our own immortality, 
let us consider for a moment some fundamental truths. 
All finite being is dependent; but, in pursuing the chain 
of dependence upward, we must finally come to an inde- 
pendent absolute Being, on which all being depends. The 
existence of such an original, or ultimate, source of being 
is avouched to us, Herbert Spencer says, with a certainty 
second only to the certainty of our own existence. Itself 
is being, and possesses all the attributes of real being. 

But what are the attributes of real being? The being 
which I know with clearest knowledge, and of whose 
existence it is impossible for me to doubt, is myself. 
What do I know of my own real being? Nothing except 
my states of consciousness, of perception and apperception. 
I know, and know that I know. I feel, and feel that I 
feel. I will, and I will to will. These powers of person- 
ality are the only attributes known to me of the being, 
myself, of whose existence I am most absolutely certain. 


346 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


I must therefore, by logical necessity, admit that the 
attributes of real being include personality, and that the 
attributes of the Ultimate Source of being include per- 
sonality. 

The moment that one is awakened to see clearly the 
fact that all real being is found in personality — that is 
to say, that God alone is, and that he upholds creation by 
the word which called it into being — we perceive also 
a sacred order in the scale of being. Matter altogether 
under necessity, and dependent wholly for every move- 
ment, and for the direction of the movement, upon exter- 
nal forces, stands lowest, in the most complete antithesis 
to personality. The plants, dependent on external forces 
for motion, but having a feeble entelechy in themselves, 
whereby they guide the motion to the building up of their 
own forms, and ina very slight degree even to the selec- 
tion of external ends, stand next. Thirdly, the animals, 
having conscious ends in view, and capable in general 
of free locomotion, approach much more nearly to being 
truly self-determined persons. They have a recognizable 
amount of freedom. But there is no satisfactory evidence 
that the animal, however highly gifted, ever rises into the 
region of generality, of abstraction, of speculation on the 
infinite, of reasoning upon morality and duty. ‘These are 
reserved for the fourth order in the scale of being, for 
man. Man alone has a language by which to express 
abstract ideas, to preserve the experience of the race, to 
divide and intercommunicate unimpaired to each in- 
dividual of the race the inheritance and life of the 
whole. In himself he finds the image of God. The ob- 
jection that this relativity of knowledge to himself renders 
the knowledge untrustworthy is self-contradictory. 


ETHICS AND RELIGION 347 


We discover that the earth rotates on her axils, and 
wheels about the sun. Our position on the planet, our 
inability to detect the motion by direct sensation or by 
any observations taken from any other position than on 
the rolling ball, does not hinder our flight, by reason, into 
the central sun, or into the midst of the immovable ether, 
and there demonstrating the motion which on the planet, 
and in the planet, we cannot see. The relativity of man’s 
knowledge — the impossibility of his seeing any thing ex- 
cept as it appears to him—does not prevent his flight, by 
reason, to the central throne of the universe, or into the 
midst of immovable and infinite Being, and there dem- 
onstrating the reality of the relations of man to the 
central orb of righteousness. The assertion that my 
knowledge of God is untrustworthy, and my conception of 
the Divine Being unworthy, implies that the speaker has 
worthier views and sounder knowledge than I; and, if he 
has, I am glad that a brother man can attain such heights 
of religious knowledge, even if he paradoxically calls it ig- 
norance. It shows that man does grapple with problems 
concerning the Infinite and Eternal. It shows that the 
personality which dwells in us is of nearer kindred to the 
Infinite Personality which creates, upholds, and guides the 
universe toward one high, far-off, moral end. 

And, immediately, the argument of our Lord to the 
Sadducees enters into full force. We who are thus made 
in the likeness of God, permitted to apprehend his being 
to inquire into his will and purposes, to feel the sense of 
obligation toward him,—we are not perishable beings: we 
are made in the image of his eternity. This is the ground 
of Aristotle for faith in human immortality. It will stand 
the assaults of all inferior men, and be unshaken. 


348 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


The infinite fulness of the Divine Love in making us 
partakers of immortal blessedness becoming thus mani- 
fested to us, all our relations to God assume a new aspect. 
Our obligation to love and serve Him is immediately 
strengthened, and made so strong that all other obligation 
is as nothing in comparison with it. Henceforth, even 
more than before, we are to account the will of God as the 
law of right. Whatever we can, from any source of light, 
clearly discover to be his will, that must be binding and 
obligatory upon us. Because it is his will who is all-wise 
and all-good, it is also right. 

But the aspect of our relations to other men is also 
changed by the perception that we and they are fellow- 
heirs of immortality. Certainly, we stand to each other in 
a different aspect, if we are going to live through untold 
ages, from that which we should bear to each other, were 
the grave to be our final end. The doctrine of immor- 
tality must therefore, of necessity, bear upon ethics, upon 
our religious and also upon our social duties. 

The question of future rewards and punishments enters 
in a somewhat different manner. Pain and pleasure have 
in themselves but little connection with morality. Yet 
a sentient being desires happiness, and has no right to 
inflict pain. The exercise of every faculty is accompanied 
with pleasure, and its hindrance with pain. This pleasure 
or pain is the immediate impulse to action. It is the im- 
mediate impulse, but not the rational end; and it is a sin- 
ful degradation of our nobler nature to make it the end. 
Take, as a simple example, the pleasure in eating. We eat 
when we are hungry, and select food that we like; yet we 
eat to live. Physical health and strength are the rational 
end of eating. He who lives to eat, who makes it a busi- 


ETHICS AND RELIGION 349 


ness and deliberate purpose to please his palate without 
regard to health, is despicable, and despised as a glutton. 
But the same things are true concerning the highest 
pleasures. They are impulses and incitements to action, 
but not the rational ends of action. The Christian relig- 
ion holds forth the happiness and the misery of a world 
beyond the grave, not as the ultimate reasons for doing 
right, but as incentives and aids to an enfeebled will. 
Jesus is emphatic in declaring that duty is the ultimate 
end, and that no man can do more than his full duty. He 
is not less emphatic in setting forth love toward God and 
charity toward men as the noblest incentives and motives 
to enforce and invigorate the commands of duty. But he 
also appeals to fear and hope, reaching beyond the grave, 
as restraints and incitements that may bring the foolish, 
erring, and spiritually benumbed to their senses, and lead 
them to feel the power of holier motives. Nor can there 
be a shadow of doubt that the fear of hell and the hope of 
heaven have been practically the means of bringing many 
thousands and tens of thousands to serious reflection, to 
earnest endeavor, to earnest prayer, and thus to that love 
which at length casts out fear, and loses itself in perfect 
acquiescence in the divine will, and in longing only to be 
made the instrument in God’s hand of blessing others. 
The ordinary duties of our daily life, the ordinary ser- 
vices whereby we are each daily doing our part toward 
supplying the needs and wants of our fellow-men, acquire 
new dignity, beauty, and grandeur in proportion as we 
take higher views of the character and destinies of those 
whom we are attempting to serve. If men are merely the 
highest of the animals, and have no immortal hopes and 
no kindship to superior beings, how petty and vain are all 


350 POSTULATES OF “ETHICS 


the cares and labors of this world! But, if we are “ born 
to rise through endless states of being,” if this world is 
the school in which we are all taught of God, all the chil- 
dren of an infinitely wise and gracious Father, and he is 
preparing us for higher scenes and holier services here- 
after, then every step of the journey of this life, every 
duty which we can be called on to perform for a fellow- 
man, becomes invested with a new and immortal value as 
a sacred part of that course of education by which the 
heavenly Father would prepare us for that eternal career 
of a divine life. 

I cannot, therefore, but arrive at the conclusion that a 
system of ethics and a canon of rules of morality founded 
upon our ethical instincts alone, without reference to the 
religious instincts and convictions, must necessarily be 
defective and partially ineffective. The religious in- 
stincts of reverence and gratitude toward God, of obliga- 
tion to defer to his will, the religious hope of immortal 
life in which we may have a holier intercourse with each 
other and closer communion, are integrant parts of 
human nature; and the moral relation between human 
beings is not completely understood and cannot be satis- 
factorily analyzed and investigated if we leave this part of 
their nature out of consideration. It seems to me, there- 
fore, with all deference to the learned and ingenious men 
who declare ethics to be independent of a belief in God 
and in immortality, that ethics is not only historically, as 
a matter of fact, interpenetrated with religion, but that itis 
in part logically dependent upon theology, and that we can- 
not have a thorough and sound ethics unless we have a liv- 
ing faith in God, as an eternal righteous judge and moral 
governor of men made in the image of his eternity. 


IX. 
NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS. 


I was one day speaking to Professor Peirce about a 
student who found great difficulty in his theoretical 
mathematics, although very ready and skilful in their 
practical applications and in their geometrical illustration 
by drawing. Peirce replied that it was a common case. 
Indeed, he thought that there was something antipodal in 
the power of geometric drawing and the power of geomet- 
ric reasoning. And, in fact, with the limited power of a 
human mind there is not only an impossibility of exerting 
its full force in two directions at once, but there is a con- 
stant tendency to anti-polarity ; that is, a strong exhibition 
of power in one direction is apt to produce an appearance 
of unusual deficiency in the opposite direction. Practice 
and theory thus become antipodal, not only in geometry, 
but in all departments of science and of action. When 
Pascal invented a calculating engine, he felt it necessary 
for his reputation among learned men to say that the ma- 
chine was not intended to be useful to practical men. In 
our day the subserviency of science to practical uses is 
becoming more evident ; yet there lingers among the com- 
mon people a prejudice that the scientific man is neces- 
sarily unpractical,—a prejudice which justifies itself by 
appealing to actual instances. Knowledge how to do a 
thing, logically precedes action as the necessary basis of 


352 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


ability to do, Yet, chronologically, the knack generally 
precedes the knowledge; and the science is composed of 
or built upon an analysis of the usage. The order of 
chronological development is generally, if not universally, 
precisely the reverse of the logical order of creation. It 
could hardly be otherwise without reversing the entire 
nature of man, or else dooming him to a wretched series 
of errors and misfortunes. Man has two poles,— matter 
and spirit; and his development begins in the material, 
and rises to the spiritual. He acts at first on the stimu- 
lus of sensation and from animal impulse, then from in- 
stinctive sentiment and from acquired habit, finally from 
the deliberate choice of reason. 

All this is directly applicable to the question whether 
a correct theory of morals is necessary to produce a moral 
life. Morality is chronologically an art before it is a 
science. Men live together in communities, and feel their 
moral relations to each other, and act upon moral senti- 
ments and instincts many centuries before they analyze 
their usages and instincts and build a system of moral 
science. It is, therefore, a misapplication of our Saviour’s 
rule — “ By their fruits ye shall know them’”— to say that 
a man’s system of moral science must be right because 
his life is right, or wrong because his life is wrong. The 
actions of a man are indications of his own personal char- 
acter,— indications which may be absolutely depended 
upon. Whenatree bears figs, it isindeed a demonstration 
that it is a fig-tree. But the actions are not necessarily an 
indication of the truth or falsehood of a man’s theories. 
The fig-tree has no theory about the method of making 
figs. Indeed, to judge from the analogies in other matters, 
we might expect a man of peculiarly strong practical 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS ae 


moral instincts to be less likely to have a very clear _per- 
ception of their intellectual implications and connec- 
tions. And, on the other hand, a man may have great 
metaphysical ability in analyzing the facts of conscious- 
ness concerning moral relations without having peculiar 
power or success in making his own life conform to 
them. It is true that morality in conduct necessarily 
implies some knowledge of moral truth; and a clear 
perception of moral truth necessarily implies the pos- 
session of moral instincts. The intellectual and the emo- 
tional elements are not mutually exclusive. Neither can 
arrive at its highest development without the presence of 
the other. The only point I insist upon is that in the 
majority of individuals one element is very largely in 
excess of the other. 

When our Lord said, “By their fruits ye shall know 
them,” he was not speaking of theories, but of men. A 
new system and theory concerning the culture of the 
fig-tree might not produce immediate effects upon the 
crop of the man who held it. A scheme of cultivation or 
education must usually be in operation several generations 
before its full effects are seen. In addition to the direct 
inculcation of truth or of error, there is an unconscious 
transmission by the power of example and the contagion 
of sympathy, modifying the direct effects of teaching. 
The various sects of the Protestant Church are readily 
distinguished by an acute observer without reference to 
the tenets on which they are professedly built, but by 
the manifestation of the peculiar tone and spirit of the 
founders and early members of the several denominations, 
passed down unconsciously by the close contact of each 
generation with the preceding. Personality, living char- 


354 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


acter, manifests itself frequently with much more power 
in other ways than in the utterance of intellectual con- 
victions or in verbal exhortations. 

We are not, therefore, to judge of the utilitarian theory 
of morals or of the agnostic separation of morality from 
religion by the personal purity of life of some of the advo- 
cates of the newethics. A careful analysis of the facts 
of human nature, sometimes a careful examination of the 
records of history, may show that an opinion which is 
harmless to the personal character of one or two men may 
become harmful when propagated widely as a dogma 
among the unthinking many, or when passed down as a 
traditional belief by several generations. It is said that 
Epicurus lived chastely and temperately, and that, never- 
theless, his teaching led multitudes to sensuality of every 
form. In modern Europe and in the United States re- 
peated instances can be shown in which the morals of 
large communities have varied from generation to genera- 
tion with their forms of religious belief, creating at least 
a presumption that there is an organic connection in the 
human mind between the two departments of activity. I 
think that I have shown that theories of morality and 
religion are indissolubly connected, and that they must 
have in the long run an effect upon the moral sentiment 
and moral action of those who hold them. Yet this influ- 
ence may not show itself in the first or even the second 
generation. Old habits cling obstinately to the people 
who have formed them, and are transmitted either by in- 
heritance or by personal contact to their children. Nor 
is the influence of theory upon action always strongly 
manifested in individual cases. Men holding the highest 
views may live badly, and those holding very erroneous 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 355 


views may still live well. Pope was not truthful in his 
utterance when he sang,— 


“For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight : 
His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.” 


No defence of utilitarianism and goodness independent 
of religion, however passionate or poetical, can be any- 
thing else than illogical and untrue to the essential nat- 
ure of morals, to the holiest instincts of the human 
heart, and to the notorious facts of human history. Ifa 
man’s life be in the right, it shows perhaps that he in- 
herited a good moral constitution, perhaps that he has 
been carefully brought up, perhaps that he has lived with- 
out serious exposure to moral temptation, perhaps that 
he has been sobered out of vice by some great moral force 
of a providential character; but it does not show that his 
theory of the moral nature nor that his theory of religion 
is true. Hehasa practical knowledge of his moral duties, 
as is shown by his performance of them; but he may not 
have acquired a theoretical knowledge of them. Practical 
knowledge is the true foundation for theory; but a man 
may have an excellent foundation, and put up a very poor 
superstructure. The mere fact that the foundation is 
good would, according to Pope’s couplet, prove the build- 
ing to be good. If the foundation is poor, the goodness 
of the building will not save it from tumbling; but, if the 
building stands, we are not to infer its goodness, but only 
its stability, which may be chiefly owing to the foundation. 

We know that, historically, moral purity and nobility 
of life have been due to monotheistic faith re-enforcing the 
native conscience. The corruption of life and manners 


356 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


in the Roman Empire at the time of the advent of Christ 
were too great to be described to modern ears. The un- 
expurgated literature of those times proves it, the histo- 
rians of that day give unmistakable evidence of it, the 
excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii give abundant 
and revolting witness to it. “Even their mind and their 
conscience were defiled.” Seneca quotes and indorses 
Athenodorus as saying that men continually prayed to 
the gods for things that they would be ashamed to whis- 
per to respectable men. The corrupt polytheists had 
been too powerful for the few earnest voices lifted up in 
defence of purer and holier lives. But, when the world 
by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolish- 
ness of preaching Christ crucified to save the world from 
‘ts sins. The reformation of manners effected by the 
preaching of Christianity cannot be questioned by any 
unprejudiced reader of European history. And in the 
course of the centuries down to the present time the 
decays and the revivals of moral character in every part 
of Christendom have been preceded and connected with 
decays and revivals of faith, But of course there have 
always been, and always will be, cases of apparent discon- 
nection. There are men of devout temperament and or- 
thodox faith who have not tender consciences, quick per- 
ceptions of right and wrong, nor strength of will to hold 
themselves to the performance of moral duty. There are 
other men who inherit from ancestors brought up in 
Christian faith and Christian virtue a temperament com- 
paratively free from vicious inclinations, and filled with 
kind and amiable dispositions. 

They are also brought up to despise what is mean and 
base, to admire what is noble. They are taught to be 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 357 


unselfish, and to seek the good of other men. They are 
taught to see that there is a great deal of work to be done 
in this world, and that it devolves upon them to do their 
share. But with all this moral education they are some- 
times taught to disbelieve in theological truth; and some- 
times, by some peculiarity of their own intellectual endow. 
ment, they are unable to see the evidences of spiritual and 
theological truth,—they are naturally sceptical. Such 
cases are sometimes appealed to as proofs of Pope’s coup- 
let, as showing the uselessness of religion for the interests 
of morality. They have been triumphantly appealed to 
by a very brilliant writer of our own day. He says that, 
so long as Christianity could truly say that infidels were 
men of immoral lives, she had a great advantage in her 
claims to truth, But now, he says, we have infidels of as 
pure and lofty a morality as believers. Therefore, Chris- 
tianity can no longer claim to be the only way of salva- 
tion. Nay, we have even atheists of as pure and lofty a 
morality as theists, showing that morality does not rest 
upon so frail a thing as belief, even upon a belief in 
God, but upon the ineradicable sentiment of self-interest, 
the perception of utility, ingrained into men by many 
generations of experience, so that now it assumes the 
form of moral instinct. 

In the consideration of this problem of non-theists liv- 
ing lives of high and pure morality, we must look at it in 
the full light of all the facts. : 

Let us, in the first place, observe that the words “ high ” 
and “pure” morality must, in the case of non-theists, ex- 
clude the religious side of ethics. I have already shown 
in the previous lecture that ethics properly includes re- 
ligious duties toward God and religious duties toward 


358 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


men; and that a consistent logical exposition of the sub- 
ject of ethics shows that our love toward men would lead 
us to endeavor, as ambassadors for Christ, to reconcile 
men to God; and that utilitarianism carried out to the 
full brings us back to admit that nothing can be so useful 
to men as to teach them to be trusting, loving, obedient 
children of God. 

But, passing this by, the claim that atheists may have 
as high and pure a moral tone as theists is a claim some- 
what difficult to prove. I confess I have never met with 
any atheistic or even agnostic men, nor read of any, who 
seemed to me to be of anything like the moral elevation 
of the best Christians of my acquaintance whom I could 
name by scores. In all that I have known, or read much 
about, there was some eccentric disregard of the estab- 
lished moral convictions of the world. 

Let that, however, pass. Admit, if you will, that cer- 
tain atheists and agnostics are, in regard to all their rela- 
tions to their fellow-men, as upright, noble, disinterested, 
and self-sacrificing as others, it must be remembered 
that they are living in the full light of the gospel day; 
that out of the writings of Hebrew prophets and Chris- 
tian apostles men have been for twenty centuries draw- 
ing lessons of the purest morality, until they have made 
these high doctrines of revelation as common as the air 
we breathe. John Stuart Mill was brought up in igno- 
rance of Christian theology, but not of Christian morality. 
On the contrary, that morality was earnestly enjoined 
upon him from his earliest childhood, not only directly by 
his father, but by all the good usages of the society in 
which he mingled, and the civil and criminal legislation 
and jurisprudence of the government under which he lived. 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 359 


The high and pure morality of such a man was there- 
fore, conceding it to be real, not so independent of Chris- 
tianity as is sometimes claimed. It was independent of 
his own belief in Christianity; but it was nevertheless 
directly derived from the influence of Christianity. That 
is a matter which the atheist and agnostic cannot help, 
He is born in Christendom, in the midst of the Church 
universal, and into the Church, just as he is born to citi- 
zenship in the nation. He may grow to manhood, and 
find his State voting to secede, and he may vote to 
secede, but that does not release him from citizenship. 
He may think, on the other hand, that the Constitution 
is a league with death and a covenant with hell, and may 
therefore abdicate all his rights of citizenship. Still, he 
cannot escape: he is a citizen, and amenable to all the 
laws of his country, and subject to all its requisitions. 
So a man born in a Christian country is born into the 
Christian Church, and cannot evade the fact. The light 
of Christian truth shines upon him; and, if he tries to 
screen himself from its direct rays, it pours in upon him, 
like the light of common day, by refraction and reflec- 
tion from every surrounding object. He can no more 
live independent of Christ than he can live independent 
of the sun. When Emerson first went to see Carlyle, 
it is reported that Carlyle said: “Well, we may say what 
we may, Christ died on the tree: that built yonder kirk ; 
and that brought you and me together.” : 

One, talking with me about his perplexity as to the 
nature and life of Jesus, said: “I wish it were possible to 
try the experiment of a purely theistic church for several 
centuries, and see whether it would maintain as high a 
morality as the Christian Church. But [he added] the 


360 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


experiment is impossible for us to try, and that for a 
double reason. It must last several centuries, so as to 
free itself from the inherited effects of Christian culture, 
and we, of course, shall die before one-half a century has 
passed ; and, secondly, it ought to be carried on in isola- 
tion, removed from the influences of Christian neighbors, 
which, if it tended to rise above them, would drag it 
down, and, if it tended to fall below them, would hold 
it up.” I think he afterward concluded that, if the ex- 
periment could be tried, it would be disastrous; for he 
settled at length into the belief that Jesus had sources of 
knowledge above those common to men, that the gospel 
of Christ is essential to the preservation of active, earnest 
faith in God, and that faith in God is essential to the 
maintenance of a high moral character in the world. 

I think he was right in his conclusions, and right in say- 
ing that the effect of a purely theistic church could not be 
fairly determined unless you could have a large church of 
that character, isolated from Christendom, maintained for 
some centuries. 

In the midst of a Christian community, where the ma- 
jority of men have for several generations tried to model 
their lives according to a Christian standard, it is im- 
possible to judge of the effects of particular theological 
beliefs or unbeliefs by observation of a few cases. The 
great general tone of the community derived from Chris- 
tianity will overpower the effect of an individual creed. 
What that effect would be if not hindered and restrained 
can be decided only from a priori reasoning, or from find- 
ing a community where the non-Christian creed is preva- 
lent, and has been so for two or three generations. 

The fact that unbelievers in Christianity —free religion- 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 361 


ists, theists, pantheists, agnostics, and atheists — unite with 
so much unanimity in commending the morality of the 
Sermon on the Mount, the twelfth chapter of Romans, 
the thirteenth of First Corinthians, and the New Testa- 
ment in general, is very far from being a proof that the 
influence of faith in the New Testament is not needed to 
teach and to give power to that morality. It is very far 
from being an evidence that that morality would have 
been developed and made as powerful in the world as it is 
without faith in Christ and in God. I think that, on the 
contrary, a careful study of the facts of history (not of the 
inverted, transposed, and perverted facts as given by 
Draper, but the real facts) will show that it is by the 
steady influence of Christian preaching that this high 
moral tone has been created in Christian lands, and that 
these non-Christian classes in these lands partake of this 
tone sympathetically, and by virtue of their being in the 
midst of a Christian community. Destroy Christian faith, 
bring the general mass of the community to the belief 
that Jesus had no other sources of knowledge on religious 
and ethical points than those which are open to all men, 
and you would produce, in my judgment, a rapid decay of 
belief in God, followed by a rapid lowering of the moral 
tone of society. Without faith in the testimony of Jesus 
to the paternal care of God over us, we readily become 
confused and lost in the contemplation of God’s infinity. 
We lose the apprehension of his personality and his per- 
sonal care over us. He is no longer an ever-present 
Witness, a faithful Judge, and Rewarder, an omnipotent 
Helper. He becomes the vague generalization of the Ulti- 
mate Cause, the unknown and unknowable Source of all, 
the consensus of all laws and all energies; and this vague 


362 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


generalization has not the power over the heart which is 
exercised by the sense of the divine love of a heavenly 
Father, a divine Shepherd, the Creator, Redeemer, and 
Sanctifier of the soul. 

When the destruction of Christian faith destroys the 
sense of personal piety, the sense of personal communion 
with the Father, the sense of the indwelling of the Holy 
Ghost the Sanctifier, then it destroys one of the great 
safeguards and buttresses of the moral character. The 
experience of twenty centuries has proved it,—that there 
is no name under heaven given among men whereby they 
can be saved other than the name of Jesus Christ, through 
whom we are led to the Father. Those churches which, in 
their horror of Orthodoxy, are carefully eliminating from 
their Sunday-school and church services every allusion to 
the name which is above every name, substituting Immor- 
tality Sunday for Easter and Children’s Sunday for Whit- 
sunday and New Year for Christmas, are not simply 
falling into (what I deem) theological errors; that were a 
matter of comparatively slight importance: they are try- 
ing an experiment exceedingly dangerous to the morals of 
the community, they are weakening greatly the present 
moral defences of men against sin, and are neither putting 
nor proposing to put any new defence in their place. 

Is it said that my views imply the doctrine of total de- 
pravity, imply that men naturally tend to the bad, and are 
preserved from it only by the guasi perpetual miracle of 
the influence of the supernatural? I deny the implication. 
I hold, on the contrary, that men are the children of God, 
and “heirs of eternity, born to rise through endless states 
of being”; but I maintain that on that very account, be- 
cause men are the children of God, God is unwearied in 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 363 


his love toward us. He has not only inspired us with holy 
instincts and affections, and gifted us with reason to com- 
prehend something of his works, but he has also made 
assurance doubly sure to us by the testimony of prophets 
and apostles and of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must re- 
member that the very existence and perpetuity of our race 
depend upon our being gifted not only with reason and 
virtue and spiritual desires, but also with impetuous pas- 
sions that shall act independent of our reason and pur- 
pose, and drive us to self-defence and to the sustenance 
of life, to the propagation of the race and to the care of 
offspring. Without this substratum of physical energy 
and animal passion within us the race would perish, 

But at the same time these terrific forces need guidance 
and restraint from the will, acting under the guidance of 
an enlightened conscience, else anger leads to bloodshed 
and violence, appetite to gluttony and to foulness that 
cannot be named. 

In this task of subduing the powers within us to work 
according to the true hierarchy, making the natural serve 
the spiritual, religious ideas and sanctions are of inesti- 
mable value ; and the neglect of religious truths is exceed- 
ingly perilous. Temptations sometimes assail a man, 
which are very subtle. The tests of utility and of suppos- 
ing the proposed action made into a universal rule, and of 
self-respect and of self-interest well understood, sometimes 
all fail; and the tempted man, longing to do something 
which his own moral instinct condemns, easily persuades 
himself that this moral instinct is a mistaken remnant of 
some feeling which he ought to have outgrown. If he 
has, then, no faith in an all-seeing Witness and Judge, he 
is sure to fall, But if in that hour of extreme moral peril 


~ 


364. POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


he remembers and believes that God sees him, if he recog- 
nizes the moral instinct as the voice of God in the soul, 
then he arouses himself to resistance; and the tempter 
flees. After the trial is over, he rejoices that he did not 
yield, and perhaps even wonders that he felt the tempta- 
tion,— so clear, after moral victory comes to him, the 
truth that the devil was a liar from the beginning, and 
that no pleasure or advantage gained by stifling the voice 
of conscience can be anything else than an apple of 
Sodom, full of ashes and bitterness. 

To recapitulate: The true ethical law includes religious 
as well as social duties, our duty to God being our first 
duty, and our first duty to men being our duty to recon- 
cile them to God. Men who have no belief in God must 
of necessity fail in these religious duties toward him and 
toward their brethren. 

Secondly, it is a somewhat arrogant claim, and difficult 
to substantiate, to claim that even in purely social duties, 
and duties in reference to themselves, non-theists are of 
as high and lofty a morality as the purest Christians. 

Thirdly, were it even so, we must remember that in a 
Christian community such men are in an atmosphere that 
will constantly tend to modify the effect of their theories ; 
and, moreover, such men in a Christian community are 
usually descendants of Christian ancestry. 

Fourthly, in maintaining that Christian views of theol- 
ogy, the acceptance of the testimony of Jesus Christ, are 
essential to a high development of moral character, and to 
the lifting of the community in general out of the slough 
of sensuality, we are not asserting the inborn depravity of 
man in any ultra-Calvinistic sense. We are merely taking 
the universally acknowledged facts that men are very 


NON-RELIGIOUS MORALS AND MORALISTS 365 


prone to sin; that the great majority of men sadly confess 
with Ovid,— 


‘Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,’’? — 


they see and approve what is good, but do what is bad; 
the evident facts, also, that, in order to keep the great 
world running, the animal appetites and desires must be 
made strong and imperious, vindicating their necessity in 
spite of all erroneous theories, but that this necessity for 
inperious strength in the passions calls also for the utmost 
exertion in self-government. 

Fifthly, that this necessity for the utmost struggle and 
exertion in self-government calls upon God as a wise and 
loving Father to give every possible aid and encourage- 
ment to those who strive to live according to their high 
birthright; and therefore, if such aids as are offered by the 
Lord Jesus Christ are possible, they are actual. The ex- 
perience of many thousands has proved that they are 
actual, and constantly received by those who strive to do 
well. It is an ungrateful and mischievous business to do 
anything to invalidate this cheering testimony of Christian 
experience to such a blessed faith. 


Xs 
LEARNING BY DOING. 


TuE doctrine that practice is the foundation of theory, 
that knack precedes knowledge, that we must do in order 
to learn, holds not only in ethics and religion, but in 
every department of education. It is the universal rule 
in gaining knowledge. The good but non-religious man, 
whom I described in the last lecture, is no exception to 
the law. So far as he is moral, he attains a practical, val- 
uable, experimental knowledge of ethics, greater than he 
could in any other way obtain. The peculiarity of his case 
is that he divides his duty, he limits his morality and his 
knowledge of it to part of the great field, and, from some 
idiosyncrasy, or some peculiarity of education, refuses to 
look at the whole field of duty or to practise his full 
duty as man. 

He who framed us, and endowed us with our various 
powers, doubtless intended that we should use them all. 
The gift of a power is not only a grant to use it, but 
imposes in some sense the obligation to use it. The 
possession of a power, and the opportunity to use it, 
creates in some degree the obligation to use it. Human 
powers differ in different men,— differ in amount, differ in 
their proportion ; but every man has head and heart and 
hands ; a mind, a soul, a power of will, to be exercised ac- 
cording to his ability and opportunity. The school of life 


LEARNING BY DOING 367 


has its tasks fitted for every variety of pupil. The world 
and its course of events furnish a proper stimulus and 
proper food for every one of the numerous intellectual fac- 
ulties of man, for every one of our emotions and sentiments, 
and for strengthening our will in all the modes in which it 
can be called into play. Yet, in every one of these greatly 
varied studies in the school of life, our divine Teacher 
employs one and the same method of education, — perhaps 
with slight variations, but substantially the same method. 

What is this method? Some special, individual thing, 
appealing first of all to outward sense, awakens some 
faculty within. The attention is aroused: the thing is 
examined, It is compared with other objects. A larger 
grasp of objects is attained: the faculty lays hold of some- 
thing higher, either contained in or suggested by the 
external objects. Thus abstract and general knowledge, 
knowledge of the supersensible, is obtained. As examples 
of this process, take the story of the Nile sweeping away the 
landmarks, and exciting the Egyptians to invent geomet- 
rical modes for re-establishing them, thus founding geom- 
etry; or the story of the swinging lamp suggesting the 
pendulum and the clock; or that of the falling apple lead- 
ing to the theory of gravity; or that of the twitching of a 
frog’s leg leading to galvanism, electrotyping, telegraphy, 
telephone, electric light. The history of modern science 
and art is full of instances in which some single curious 
phenomenon of nature provoked investigation, and led to 
inventions of great utility or to high results of scientific 
truth. 

On the other hand, when men have proposed and de- 
sired to do some great thing, they have been very apt to 
fail. A grand generalization, sought in an ambitious way, 


368 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


is apt to be vague and worthless. If reached in the 
natural, healthful way, through the investigation of in- 
dividual or special phenomena, it is usually valuable and 
of practical utility. General views not built on a careful 
experimental view of particular cases are in danger of 
omitting essential features. On the other hand, the mere 
details of individual cases, not leading to the perception 
of any law, are wearisome, and without profit. 

All that I have thus said of intellectual growth is true 
of moral growth also, and of zsthetic culture. The gen- 
eral love of an art is first awakened by some particular 
instance or example in the art. This might be illustrated 
by abundant examples from the biographies of sculptors, 
painters, and musicians. All art is more or less imitative. 
Nature gives the first pattern. Then successive artists 
stimulate each other, and suggest to one another methods 
of attaining higher and higher success in the arts sug- 
gested by the pattern. The humblest arts and the loftiest 
are alike under this law. Dr. Isaac Watts says the best 
way to teach a child to read well is to read well to it the 
very lesson which you are about to require it to read. 
When I was teaching a common school, I received from 
the superintendent of the school committee higher praise 
for my success in teaching to read than for anything else; 
and my plan was in accordance with Dr, Watts’s sugges- 
tion. I would read the paragraph not badly, but tamely, 
and ask a scholar to improve on my reading; and, when 
all the class had tried, then I would read it as well as 
I could, and ask them to improve on that, and they 
often did. 

Not only the reading of a composition is an art best 
learned by the method of imitation, but the art of compo- 


LEARNING BY DOING 369 


sition is itself of the same nature. The study of gram- 
mar is comparatively useless in teaching one the use of 
a language,— useless in comparison with the reading of 
the language. And let the language be never so per- 
fectly mastered by the intellect, a graceful, poetical use 
of it is to be obtained only by reading graceful, poetical 
writings in it. The temporary effect on the style pro- 
duced by reading is sometimes wonderful. Many a man 
can write an admirable parody on a poem who could not 
write an original poem worth reading. And our best 
poets are always readers of poetry. Not only poetry, but 
eloquent prose, has a similar power. I was once required 
to write a page of Latin, when I had not for twenty busy 
years written a single Latin sentence. I knew just what 
I wanted to say; but I could not have written a line of it 
in Latin, had I not taken up first Cicero's De Senectute, 
and read as diligently and rapidly as I could, without 
grammar or dictionary, for about two hours. Then I took 
my pen, and wrote, currente calamo, my page, and received 
many compliments for the Ciceronian elegance of my 
Latinity. In like manner Barnas Sears, of honored and 
beloved memory, was once obliged to write a report when 
his mind was in such a whirl that he felt incapable of 
writing smooth English. He took up Burke’s Orations 
and read for an hour, then rapidly wrote his report, and 
was afterward told by a friend, “ You never wrote so 
well before: it reads like an oration of Edmund Burke.” 

Such facts — and I could multiply my quotations of them 
ad libitum — make me insist upon it that the best way to 
learn either your own tongue or a foreign tongue is to 
read the works of the best writers, without grammar 
or dictionary,— just read persistently until you can read 


370 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


easily. After that the grammar and dictionary will be of 
great value. 

Now, the end of ethical knowledge is right living; and 
right living is of the nature of an art, like right speaking 
and writing. It is largely to be learned by example, by 
imitation, by emulation of those who would provoke one 
another to love and good works. The adult of speculative 
turn may, if he wishes, analyze the arts of sculpture and 
painting and music and writing and speaking, and the 
art of right living, and may develop rules and standards 
for the performance of all of these arts. These rules and 
standards may even be of great aid and assistance to 
advanced pupils who blend in their nature the practical 
and the theoretical faculties. But for young children, and 
for adults who are chiefly practical in their tone of mind, 
and who have little taste or ability for criticism, rules 
and theories are comparatively worthless. Good models 
are the only suggestive, inspiriting, and strengthening 
teachers. 

Herein, I think, lies the secret of what Bishop F. D. 
Huntington has, in a remarkable lecture, called ‘“ uncon- 
scious tuition.” In a country town there were two school 
districts very similar in all their elements. Each school- 
house was very near a cotton factory. Each school was 
composed about one-half of children of Irish, the other half 
of American parentage. Yet one of them was one of the 
best, the other one of the worst schools I ever saw. In 
one the scholarship was poor, the behavior bad,— profan- 
ity and tobacco-chewing, and filthy language not only in 
the mouths of the children, but scribbled and cut with 
knives all about the school-house and its outbuildings. 
In the other the scholarship was excellent, and the be- 


LEARNING BY. DOING 371 


havior still better. It was a constant surprise and de- 
light to see how clean and bright and happy the children 
were, and how thoroughly they understood and enjoyed 
their lessons. Not a mark or scratch of any kind was in 
their school-house or on their outbuildings or fences. 
Not a profane, coarse, or even rough or harsh word was 
ever heard about the premises. 

What was the reason? In the one school there had 
been for many years an ordinary run of good teachers. In 
the other there had been for many years one sweet, neat, 
bright young woman. And how had she done it? She 
did not know, she could not tell. She had made, she 
said, no special effort. She did not know, but I think I 
did. She was always gentle, she was always firm. She 
was always most scrupulously neat and orderly. For the 
first few months, if a scholar came to school dirty and 
with tumbled hair, she would take him aside, and pleas- 
antly suggest to him to go home and wash his face and 
hands and comb his hair. It very soon became the fashion 
in that school — one-half the children of Irish laborers — 
for the children to come daily as clean and neat as soap 
and water and towels and comb could make them. The 
teacher never had a book out of place. The children 
caught the trick, and kept their desks in order. Even in 
the studies the teacher was really interested in the mat- 
ters she was teaching. She thus unconsciously awakened 
interest in her school. She declared she did not know 
how she produced the remarkable effect on the school; 
and she was honest: she did not know how she did it. 
Still, in the best sense of the words, she knew how to do 
it, and proved her knowledge by doing it. She kept her 
own heart and own life right; she kept her mind awake 


372 POSTULATES OF “EABICS 


and interested in knowledge; she kept her temper even, 
and her heart full of gratitude to God,—full of delight in 
the beauties of creation, full of kindness to the children; 
she kept her habits right in scrupulous neatness and good 
order. The children caught the influence as_ uncon- 
sciously as she poured it out. All was freedom and glad- 
ness in their hearts and lives. 

Here was a very striking instance, the most striking 
which I have ever seen in a school. But every man and 
every woman is exerting influence in a similar manner, 
although it may be to a less extent. A clergyman long 
settled over any parish affects his people by this uncon- 
scious tuition, this effluence from his whole life, as much 
as by his direct teaching in the pulpit. The verbal teach- 
ing, if it fall into monotony, begins to lose its power: 
whereas the influence of an example is rather increased 
by the steady perseverance of the example in the right 
direction. 

I have heard that the Rev. Dr. Stebbins named “ power 
in the pulpit” as the first requisite for ministerial suc- 
cess. But, if he did, he certainly must have taken for 
granted that every minister would be a man of personal 
piety and of moral integrity. No power in the pulpit can 
atone for the want of these. I knew of a minister who 
said to one of his parishioners, “I have not seen you at 
church, lately, Mr. B.”” ‘No, sir,” replied he: “when I 
lost the last particle of respect I had for my minister, 
I thought it time to stop going to church.” “And may I 
ask when that precise time was?’ said the minister. 
“Yes, sir: it was when I found that you had lied to me!” 
And the minister, instead of resenting the charge, whined, 
and apologized that he had been cornered, and did not 


LEARNING BY DOING 373 


know how to get out except by alie! How could such a 
man’s preaching, even had it excelled that of Paul and 
Barnabas, have been of any value to those who perceived 
‘n him so shameful a lack of manly uprightness and moral 
integrity ?. 

Even a false accusation against a clergyman’s moral 
character sometimes neutralizes the value of his labors,— 
how much more the accusation substantiated by his own 
confession and wretched attempt at an apology! 

Equally fatal is the lack of reverence, showing the ab- 
sence of a personal piety. This lying clergyman after- 
ward, in another parish, took the occasion, while standing 
before the communion table ready to break the bread, to 
tell his church members that he had bought some books 
for the Sunday-school library, and wanted the money back 
again. He had calculated that ninepence from each 
church member would about make it up; and, therefore, 
he would dun every church member, as he met them, for 
‘t, And then, with an incredibly sacrilegious and ghastly 
attempt at humor, he stretched his arm over the sacred 
symbols before him, and, shaking his forefinger at the com- 
municants, added, “And, if the ninepence is not forth- 
coming, I shall appear unto you!” 

How could that church any longer endure the ministry 
of such a minister? Yet that man, full of moral faults 
and lacking in religious reverence, was settled over five 
parishes before he left the calling which he so continually 
disgraced ! ? 

I have compared right living to an art, and shown that 
in every art practical knack acquired by acting on native 
impulse, and perfected by imitation and emulation of good 
models, is more valuable than theoretical knowledge, and is, 


374 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


indeed, the only basis of a sound theory. But right living 
is in one respect entirely different from all other arts, just 
as the sentiment of duty and feeling of obligation are differ- 
ent from all other sentiments and feelings. I may admire 
the naturalness of Greek sculpture, the majesty of Michel 
Angelo, the namby-pamby grace of Canova, the religious 
simplicity of Thorwaldsen ; but I am not thereby put under 
any obligation to model orcarve. I may be delighted with 
the wonderful paintings of the public galleries and private 
collections, but Iam not called upon myself to touch brush 
or canvas. The great musicians of the world may move 
my soul to its depths, but that puts me under no obliga- 
tions to sing or play. Nor does my delight in the stately 
eloquence of Webster or the facile fluency of Dickens, or 
the pensive dignity of Tennyson or the polished refine- 
ment of Longfellow, summon me to touch pen to paper. 

It is far otherwise in the moral sphere. There all 
admiration imposes obligation. It is true the obligation 
is not strictly proportional to the admiration, because the 
admiration is proportioned to another man’s powers and 
the obligation to my own. But, whenever the admiration 
is excited by moral virtue, then it imposes on me an ob- 
ligation to acquire that virtue and to practise it to the 
extent of my ability. My recognition of moral goodness 
in another is the recognition of an obligation to all of that 
goodness which with my powers and temperament I can 
attain. My recognition of vice, moral defect, sin in 
another, is the recognition of my own obligation to hate 
and avoid that sin with all my strength. 

This is the very form and essence of the ethical senti- 
ment,— that it is accompanied by the sense of obligation, of 
duty; and it is this peculiarity which renders so emphati- 


LEARNING BY DOING 375 


cally important in this branch of knowledge the Froe- 
belian motto, “Learn by doing.” If the sentiments of ad- 
miration awakened by instances of conspicuous virtue do 
not lead to an imitation of the virtue, then they degener- 
ate into sentimentality, into leaves without fruit. This 
is the constant danger in all attempts to teach morality 
to children. In Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Elements of Mo- 
rality,” of which in my boyhood I was, spite of its name, 
very fond, she gives a series of simple stories connected 
on the thread of a fictitious family history, illustrating 
all the moral virtues by examples of the exercise of 
the virtues and examples of persons exemplifying the 
Opposite vices. M. F. Cowdery, of Sandusky, Ohio, 
published a more extensive collection of stories, princi- 
pally, perhaps wholly, from real life, and without the 
connecting thread. Such books are intended to teach 
morals by example. They doubtless have upon many 
minds a good effect. Yet to others they become mere 
precept, and produce no valuable result. All novels and 
works of fiction have more or less the same character. 
If, like a good drama, the novel holds the mirror up 
to nature, and gives us a transcript of human life as it 
might be or as it essentially is, then the novelist is set- 
ting before us a series of pictures of good and bad people, 
showing faults to avoid and virtues to emulate. He may 
not have in his mind any moral effect which he con- 
sciously makes the end of his endeavor; but, if he draws 
upon a correct and healthy imagination, he holds up to us 
portraits of men and women with virtues and vices, with 
noble characters or with mean and ignoble traits. These 
are, whatever their creator may design, models set before 
us that must affect us morally with more or less power. 


376 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


A wise reader can use them to advantage in helping him 
to understand his own faults and fight them, in stimulat- 
ing him to make his own life sublime. But the constant 
danger is that we simply let them arouse our feelings 
without leading us to any nobler action. This is senti- 
mentality,— to indulge in feelings over the novel or over 
the tale of your neighbor’s real distress, and praise your- 
self for the tenderness of- your feeling, but to let it die 
away without any action. 

If we do so, then the moral character is injured instead 
of being benefited; and the frequent repetition of the 
process blunts the sense of obligation and bewilders the 
judgment concerning duty. Unswerving adherence to 
the right, unhesitating and unwearied obedience to our 
convictions of duty, is the only safe way, the only sure de- 
fence against moral blindness. 

Even with the best endeavors we can make, it is some- 
times very perplexing to know what one ought to do. 
The moral sentiment affirms strongly the obligations of 
duty; and the moral judgment decides promptly and with 
no uncertain tone concerning certain duties,—that we 
must be true, reverent, faithful, chaste, temperate, kind. 
But, when you attempt to decide the precise boundaries 
of action thus imposed upon you, you frequently find very 
difficult cases of conscience. I think it scarcely worth 
while to discuss these in advance of the actual cases which 
may arise to trouble you. I went one day to Dr. James 
Walker to get his advice on a question of my own duty. 
His treatment of it was very characteristic. Said 
Jared Sparks one day, “He argues both sides so well 
that you do not know which side he believes in.” 
Dr. Walker heard my statement, and then said to me: 


<i e 


LEARNING BY DOING 377 


“This is one of those cases in which, whichever way 
you may decide, it will be right. Now try to decide 
that one is right and the other wrong; and you look 
it over and over, and turn it around and around, until 
it seems that your very brain is tired and sore with 
the friction.” He went on then to state all the argu- 
ments pro and con,—he seemed equally fair in stating 
both sides,— yet he made the arguments so plain and 
clear that it was an immense help to me. Before he 
had fairly finished his summary, I had decided: I would 
adhere to my purpose of entering the Christian ministry ; 
and I have never for an instant regretted the decision. 

There are, therefore, two errors to be carefully avoided 
by the good man, and to be avoided with the utmost care 
by the Christian minister. The one is that of failing in 
moral integrity and in personal piety, These are the 
things for which the universe itself exists. ‘God is 
a Spirit; and they who worship him must worship in 
spirit and in truth.”’ Personal spiritual communion with 
the heavenly Father in thanksgiving, in penitence, in 
aspirations after divine grace; and truthful, honest, hon- 
orable obedience to his moral law in our intercourse with 
other men,— this is the worship of God in spirit and in 
truth, for which, as the highest end attainable in the uni- 
verse, so far as we know, the universe exists. 

No irreverence, no untruthfulness, no unfairness, no 
equivocation, no lightness and frivolity, no unholy pas- 
sions or desires, no malice or hardheartedness, must be 
allowed in the heart, to be betrayed to the most lynx-eyed 
foes or to be seen by the all-seeing and ever kind Friend. 

But, on the other hand, we must not forget that we are 
but dust. We should not demand of ourselves more than 


378 POSTULATES OF ETHICS 


itis in human nature to perform. I have known a good 
Christian worried and troubled at seeing me pluck from 
a large and thrifty philadelphus bush overhanging the 
fence of my neighbor’s dooryard a single green leaf to 
show to some one its curious resemblance in flavor toa 
cucumber. He thought that I was taking what was not 
my own, and was mutilating an ornamental bush. Had it 
occurred to him, I think he would have tried to convict 
me of wrong in doing it by asking me what would be the 
effect if every one who went by picked a leaf. In vain I 
said that the leaf was of no value to the owner, and that 
its loss did not mutilate or disfigure the bush, nor would 
the bush be disfigured if every one who, like myseli, 
wanted a leaf for a specific definite use, should take one. 
I consider him morbidly conscientious, endeavoring to 
conform to an impossible standard of morals. It was not 
nearly so bad a fault as dishonesty and moral indiffer- 
ence would have been, but still I thought it a fault. I 
think that we may say of all virtues what in Miss 
Edgeworth’s “ Helen”’ is said of truth,— that he is guilty 
of constructive treason against virtue who makes truth- 
telling unnecessarily disagreeable. A morbid, over-sensi- 
tive conscience, tithing mint and anise and cumin with 
too much care, makes religion and virtue offensive, and 
leads bystanders to neglect the weightier matters of 
the law. 

Yet — I repeat it again and again — you had better even 
be over-sensitive and over-rigid in your dealing with your- 
self than lax and blunt in your dealing with men. For 
your own clearness of moral view and for the sake of 
your influence on others, keep yourselves from the possi- 
bility of any just reproach, or just cause of suspicion, of 


LEARNING BY DOING 379 


failing in the great fundamentals of the moral law. The 
religion of Jesus demands purity in the thoughts and in- 
tents of the heart, and makes the maintenance of moral 
purity and personal integrity of the first and highest im- 
portance. Better be drowned in the depths of the sea 
than lead a fellow human being into sin! 

This has in the olden days been considered the pecul- 
iarity of the Unitarian denomination,— that its preachers 
in the pulpit, and both preachers and people in their daily 
lives, have exemplified and illustrated so fully personal 
righteousness, justice, and integrity. May the good Spirit 
and Providence of God make it again, and more abun- 
dantly, the characteristic of the whole church of him who 
came to purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of 
good works! 


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